Invention Of Computer & Mouse

To name the inventor of the computer is problematic because it depends on the definition of the word "computer". However, it is much easier to define the origin of the mouse, which was invented in 1964 by Douglas Engelbart.

Computer

A number of people have been hailed as "the inventor of the computer" since Charles Babbage (England) designed his Analytical Engine in 1853, which would have been the first programmable computer except that is was never built. Other candidates include Konrad Zuse (Germany); John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry (USA); Max Newman, Alan Turing and Thomas Flowers (Britain), and John Mauchily and Presper Eckert (USA).

The machines of all these inventors heralded technological advances, but two things are crucial to the modern definition of a computer: it must be programmable, and it must have stored memory (RAM, or random access memory). By that definition, the computer was finally "invented" by Professor Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn (both England) at Manchester University in 1948 when they produced "Baby", the world's first stored-programme computer. which first ran on 21 June 1948, successfully performing a 17-instruction programme that signaled the birth of the first true computer.


Mouse

Douglas Engelbart (USA) has over 40 patents to his name relating to computing, the most memorable of which, though not necessary the most important, is the computer mouse. Engelbart wanted to find the best way to do things on screen that a keyboard could not do. He looked into the existing ideas, which included joysticks and light pens, and combined the best features of all them. Then, in 1964, he invented what he later patented as: "An X-Y position indicator for a display system" (filed 1967, granted 1970). This device was designed to be moved across a flat surface and contained two discs at right angles to each other, one to calculate the left-right position (X axis) and one ti calculate the up-down position (Y axis) on the screen; with its compact, curved casing and tail-like wire. Engelbart's invention was soon nicknamed the mouse.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison