MasHD Blog

Though trackpads and touchscreens are slowly replacing the industrious little device, we’ve all used a mouse at one point or another, and they can found in tens of thousands of offices and homes across the globe, having served as a vital bit of modern computing for decades. Last night, the device’s inventor, Doug Engelbart, passed away at the age of 88 in his sleep. The information came from Engelbart’s daughter, who reported his passing in an email to the Computer History Museum located in California, the same state where the inventor worked at a research institute on a variety of other technologies used in modern times, including early forms of word processors, video teleconferencing, and email. You can see the mouse for yourself in the image above, with the device being little more than a chunk of wood, a cable/connector, and a couple wheels inside that are made of metal. The invention took place in the 1960s, and it would be a while before it was adopted for widespread use wi...