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The Mouse Turns 40

Posted by timothy on from the well-it-wasn't-born-that-day dept.

Smivs writes with an excerpt from the BBC marking the anniversary of what may be the most famous tech demo outside Trinity site: "The humble computer mouse celebrates its 40th anniversary today. On 9 December 1968 hi-tech visionary Douglas Engelbart first used one to demonstrate novel ways of working with computers. The first mouse that Dr Engelbart used in the demo at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) was made of wood and had one button. Much of the technology shown off in the demo inspired the creation of the hardware and software now widely used. ... The mouse, which was built by Bill English, helped Dr Engelbart demonstrate how text files could be clipped, copied and pasted as well as showing ways of using computer networks to collaborate on projects or co-edit documents." According to the article, "A day of celebration is planned in California to mark the 40th anniversary; with many of the researchers behind the original demo reunited to mark the event."

6 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Priorities, people, priorities by philspear · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Answer: People who live in the US. Which happens to be quite a few around this neck of the interwoods. You might be looking for euroslashdot, which is that way -->

  2. Re:Priorities, people, priorities by revlayle · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Correction... some people in the US. Even then, not all of them give a shit, esp. on a TECH WEBSITE.

  3. Re:Priorities, people, priorities by mewshi_nya · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Oh, we care. We're nerds, we pay attention to lots of things. Saying that we don't care because this is a "tech" site is ignorant.

    I got an e-mail alert from the wall street journal about this, and it's VERY interesting stuff...

  4. Re:Priorities, people, priorities by mea37 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Yeah, but you know what nobody cares abuot?

    This stupid debate over whether anyone cares!

  5. big demo video by themusicgod1 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Does anyone know where a free (let's make clear: not realmedia 2 or whatever) online copy of the Big Demo may be found?

    --
    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
  6. Re:Priorities, people, priorities by philspear · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    correction... some people in the US...

    That's why I said "quite a few," and did NOT say "People who live in the US, which is everyone on /." Not everyone does, but slashdot is pretty american-centric by visitors and stories.

    I also didn't say "everyone who lives in the US cares about this." I wasn't making absolute statements, I don't know why you read them as such. Maybe to make yourself look smarter when you objected?