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The Mice That Didn't Make It
Harry writes "For every blockbuster of the mouse world (such as Microsoft and Logitech's big sellers) there have been countless mice that flopped, or never made it to market. Mice shaped like pyramids; mice shaped like Mickey; mice that doubled as numeric keypads or phones. Even one that sat on your steering wheel. I've rounded up some evocative patent drawings on twenty notable examples."
....is not a mouse at all. It's the RollerMouse, which lets me mouse without taking my hands off the keyboard. I have used this for 10 years and continue to be amazed that its not the standard in computing.
The pear-shaped, ridged piece of garbage that came with Packard Bells in the 1990s. I know you're surprised-- Packard-Bell made crappy hardware? But instead of durable grey rubber like most decent mice of the time, the ball on this thing was made of some porous black fake-rubber product that disintegrated in about a month on the display model. It's hard to demo a product when it just came out last month and the customers can see the mouse is already broken.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.