@lori I'm mostly just paraphrasing what the I recall being described as results from user group studies at SRI were on pointing devices.

The mouse wasn't the only thing they tried. Light pens predated the mouse (e.g. in Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI )

My understanding is that Bill English/ARC/The Augment group at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) under Doug(las) Engelbart experimented with various pointing devices, before settling on a 3 button mouse.

Some iterations had fewer (perhaps even no? I don't recall) buttons, some had as many as five buttons I seem to recall?

They even purportedly experimented with a pointing that was driven by knee movements (presumably to allow the hands to be free for other things, though perhaps this may have also been useful for accessibility much in the way there are some alternative pointing devices based upon eye tracking or breathing in more recent decades)

In SRI's studies apparently 3 buttons was considered ideal by most users?

Admittedly, they experimented with a lot of other things when it came to user input too.

For example, instead of relying solely on a QWERTY keyboard layout, NLS used a "chorded" keyboard (image attached).

Similar to playing notes on piano keys, or stenographer keyboards, multiple keys could be held simultaneously, to produce different characters.

Some years ago, an app was made available for mobile touch screen devices, by Adam Kumpf from Teague Labs but that app did not keep up & isn't in app stores anymore. (remnant: https://www.fastcompany.com/1669042/a-famous-inventors-forgotten-idea-a-one-handed-touch-screen-keyboard).

Others made an interface for the original hardware to an iPad (e.g: https://valerielandau.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/engelbart-typing-on-the-ipad-with-the-chorded-keyset/ ).

Presumably due to the versatility of the chorded keyset (typically used by the left hand) excessive buttons on the mouse (typically used by the right hand) made it such that 3 buttons seemed sufficient?

@alcinnz @ajroach42

#NLS #Mouse #ThreeButtons #ChordedKeySet #Engelbart #SRI #ComputerHistory #oNLineSystem #DougEngelbart #TipTap

@ajroach42 NLS (oNLine System) was an outgrowth of Engelbart's Augment group at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) and also: not military.

I'm attaching an image from The Engelbart Hypothesis (2009) which shows the meditative full lotus/cross legged seating in use by some.

Bill English (also part of Engelbart's Augment group) not only invented the mouse, he basically pioneered the field of ergonomics. They partnered with Herman Miller to design a lot of their prototypes.

Trivia: (learned via John Daneen [sp?] at n CoLABoration 2010 Program for the Future held at the Computer History Museum with Engelbart et al present) SRI actually terminated Doug Engelbart after he gave the "Mother of all Demos" presentation in 1968.

Eventually, J.C.R. Licklider heard of the presentation & was so excited that someone had built a computer network (about which he had theorized, though "Lick" worked on SAGE [Semi-Automatic Ground Environment ]) that he contacted SRI to discuss providing them with funding (which is when NLS got subsumed into [D]ARPANet).

SRI, very quietly: hired Doug back.

There's unfortunately, a lot of confusion about a lot of this stuff as much of this technology was commercialized by companies which had no stake in creating it. e.g. Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) gets more or less all of it wrong, implying that Micro$oft and Apple stole such ideas from Xerox PARC.

PARC had a cross licensing agreement with SRI and SAIL.

Additionally, it is my understanding that Apple paid SRI licensing fees when they implemented their own version of the mouse (but they only used one button, whereas SRI/Bill English had already experimented with many variations and determined through user studies that three buttons had the fewest trade offs).

@alcinnz

#NLS #SRI #Engelbart #BillEnglish #Mouse #ChordedKeyset #ARC #HermanMiller #ergonomics #nonmilitarycomputing #ARPANet #Licklider #DouglasEngelbart #DougEngelbart #JCRLicklider #AugmentingHumanIntelligence #ComputerHistory

Doug Engelbart
30 Jan 1925. - 2 Jul 2013

Quotes and resources celebrating the life and work of Douglas C. Engelbart.

Doug was a father of hypertext and of the potential of technology to augment the ability of humans to address the complex and urgent problems challenging our world.

#Engelbart
#Hypertext

http://tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Blog1246

On December 9th 1968, Doug #Engelbart appeared on stage at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco's Civic Auditorium to give his slated presentation, titled "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect"
Masterminding the whole production was lead engineer Bill English. As the session came to a close, the audience erupted into a standing ovation. This came to be known as "The Mother of All Demos"
https://dougengelbart.org/thedemo/

On December 9th 1968, Doug #Engelbart appeared on stage at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco's Civic Auditorium to give his slated presentation, titled "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect"

Masterminding the whole production was lead engineer Bill English. As the session came to a close, the audience erupted into a standing ovation. This came to be known as "The Mother of All Demos"

https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/

Create tools and then use those tools to improve the tools. As the tools improve, they make it possible to make new, more useful tools.

Doug #Engelbart called the approach #bootstrapping , named for the bootstrap circuit in radar systems.

Doug Engelbart 1962 research report "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework"
https://framework.thoughtvectors.net/

Rappel : le 9 décembre, il faudra fêter le cinquante-et-unième anniversaire de « la mère de toutes les démos ». (Plein d'anniversaires des années 60.) #Engelbart #NLS #PARC #souris

#50ansInternet

**Hommage à Douglas Carl Engelbart **
Il y a 50 ans, le 09 décembre 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart fait la 1ère keynote de l’histoire !

A la différence de Steve Job, il n’a jamais cherché à faire fortune et pourtant il est l’un des inventeurs et pionniers de l’informatique… rien que ça !
Connu pour avoir été l’inventeur de la souris, il l’est aussi de (juste une petite liste) :
. la téléconférence
. l’éditeur / traitement de texte...

#informatique #Engelbart #inventeur
https://www.mapao.net/actualites-web/556-hommage-%C3%A0-douglas-carl-engelbart.html