Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!shelby!agate!bionet!arisia!roo!lanning From: lanning@parc.xerox.com (Stan Lanning) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: The Mouse -- What is its History? Message-ID: Date: 8 Oct 90 16:43:34 GMT References: <90274.094731ELE@psuvm.psu.edu> <26801@mimsy.umd.edu> <10592@goofy.Apple.COM> Sender: news@parc.xerox.com Organization: Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 26 In-reply-to: casseres@apple.com's message of 5 Oct 90 22:33:45 GMT >>>>> Regarding Re: The Mouse -- What is its History?; casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) adds: David> The mouse technology went to Xerox PARC in the early 70's, where the mouse David> was flattened out by eliminating the wheels in favor of a ball, and later David> on, optical sensing. The number of buttons was reduced to two, apparently David> because the PARC researchers felt the number 3 was too large to be grasped David> by the intellects of non-Computer-Science people. (Okay, so that's an David> editorial comment...). [ Gee, here go Apple and PARC feuding in public. ;-) ] The machines PARC developed and used all had 3 button mice. The 2 button mouse was the result of the product group. They did some studies and found that performance (measured by speed to perform simple operations) with a 2 button mouse was as good as with a 3 button mouse, but a 1 button mouse wasn't as good. They indeed wanted the mouse to be as simple as possible, so they ended up with a 2 button mouse. Two button mice were never popular at PARC. I should also note that the optical mice developed at PARC, like mechanical mice, sense mouse-relative motion, not mouse-pad relative motion. Those of you suffering with Sun optical mice will understand and appreciate the difference. -- -- smL