*BSD News Article 70219


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From: deborah@gallifrey.microunity.com (Deborah Gronke Bennett)
Subject: Re: The invention of the pointing device
In-Reply-To: brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk's message of 4 Jun 1996 00:09:19 +0100
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Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 01:04:58 GMT
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In article <4ovrb0$o3@anorak.coverform.lan> brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk (Brian Somers) writes:


   This was answered with "Double clicking was invented by the MAC well
   before X was ever invented.".

   Does anyone know how long X has been around, and when the first pointing
   device was introduced ?  Can anyone point me in the right direction ?

The pointing device was invented by Douglas Engelbart at SRI in
the 1960's. Check out this web page for a brief history:
http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/features/mouse/mouse.html
(caveat: written for kids), or do a web search on
Engelbart and mouse.

X10 or early X11 (like R3) was being ported to HP workstations
in HP-Labs in 1986. I took a survey of Window Systems course once where
it was said that X was invented at Stanford to run on
an operating system called W, but I don't have any details
or dates.
-- 
----------
Deborah Gronke Bennett 	(WD5HJH) 	kernel and device drivers engineer
deborah@microunity.com			(408)-734-8100
MicroUnity Systems Eng., 255 Caspian Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1015 USA

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