The computer mouse as we know it today was invented and developed

by Douglas Engelbart, with the assistance of Bill English, during the

1960's and was patented on November 17,1970.
While creating the mouse, Douglas was working at the Stanford Research
Institute, a think tank sponsored by Stanford University. The mouse was
originally referred to as an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System" and
was first used with the Xerox Alto computer system in 1973. Using the
mouse, Douglas was able to demonstrate moving a mouse cursor on the Alto
computer in The Mother of All Demos. However, because of its lack of
success, the first widely used mouse is the mouse found on the Apple Lisa
computer.

The picture to the right was taken by Maracin Wichary at the New Mexico
Museum of Natural History and Science and is an example of what the first
computer mouse. As you can see in the picture, the mouse was made of
wood, was much larger than today's mouse, rectangular in size, and had a
small button in the top right corner.
Today, the mouse is still used on every desktop computer and has influenced
other input devices such as the touchpad on a laptop computer and touch
screens on smartphones and tablets.

Why is the computer mouse called a mouse?

With the cord coming out of the back of the mouse Douglas said the device
reminded him of the rodent mouse and the name stuck. It's a lot easier to
remember than a X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001083.htm
Mouse

Originally referred to as an X-Y Position Indicator for a Display

System, a mouse is a hardware input device that was invented
by Douglas Engelbart in1963 while working at Xerox PARC. The mouse
allows an individual to control a pointer in a graphical user interface
(GUI) and manipulate on-screen objects such as icons, files,
and folders.
By using a mouse, the user doesn't have to memorize commands, such as
those utilized in a text-based command line environment like MS-DOS. For
example, in MS-DOS a user would have to know the cd command and dir
command to navigate to a folder and view the files inside. Whereas a
Windows user only has to double-click a file to view its contents.

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/m/mouse.htm
Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 July 2, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor,
and an early computer andInternet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field
of humancomputer interaction, particularly while at his Augmentation Research Center Lab in SRI
International, which resulted in the invention of the computer mouse, and the development
of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces. These were
demonstrated at The Mother of All Demos in 1968. Engelbart's Law, the observation that the intrinsic
rate of human performance is exponential, is named after him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart
http://thechive.com/2012/03/29/20-facts-about-technology-that-might-
surprise-you-20-photos/
Simon William "Bill" English (born 30 December 1961) is the Deputy
Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of New Zealand, in office since
2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_English