Abtahi Chowdhury

Professor Andrea Stella

English 21007
21 February 2018
History of the Mouse
The origins of the computer mouse dates back to the 1940s, to a time when it looked very
different to the modern computer mouse. That
original concept was a called a trackball, that
was originally implemented into military radars.
The first actual mouse was invented in 1964 in
Stanford University. As opposed to the optical
mouses of today, this original mouse had more
in common with ball mice. However, unlike
modern mice, this one was not able to detect
movement in any direction at any time. It only
has two axis and could only utilize one of them
at a time. This was later bought by Xerox and
used to make the first ball mouse that is able to
utilize both axis on the mice.

Ball Mouse Diagram

1. Base
2. Ball Cover Ring
3. Clicker Buttons
4. Top Shell
5. Scroll Wheel
6. PC Board
7. Ball
8. Input Rollers
9. Input Turn Gears
10. Pressure Spring
 Functions of the Parts
1. Base - Holds the entire mouse together including the various components of the mouse.
Will often have ribbing to help connect with the top shell and provide more structural
support.
2. Ball Cover Ring - Thin plastic ring keeping the ball from falling out the bottom of the
mouse.
3. Clicker Buttons - Three buttons placed at the front of the mouse to read left, middle, and
right clicks.
4. Top Shell - The top of the mouse that covers up the insides and provides a comfortable
surface for the user to rest their hand.
5. Scroll Wheel - Hard plastic covered with thin rubber to provide a scrolling mechanism
with a good grip.
6. PC Board - This acts as the brains of the mouse and interprets all the inputs and then
sends them to the computer via a wired or wireless connection.
7. Ball - Hard rubber ball that is the core of the mouse. Since it is a sphere, it is able to roll
in any direction, which is vital as the mouse needs to be able to detect movement in any
direction on a surface. This rolling of the rubber ball is read by the turn gears.
8. Input Rollers - The cylindrical axis that sit against the ball. They turn along with the ball
and turn the input turn gears
that are at the end of the
axis. There are two of these,
one to record the X-axis
movement and one to record
the Y-axis movement.
9. Input Turn Gears - These
are the two most important
parts of the ball mouse as
they turn the analog
movement of the mouse into
digital movement of the
mouse cursor on screen.
They are connected to the
end of a input roller and have small notches on the edge of the wheel. As these wheels
turn, they break a tiny laser light in the mouse. These breaks in the light are used to
indicate how much the mouse has moved and that information is then processed by the
PC board and sent to the computer.
10. Pressure Spring - Small spring that is used to hold the ball against the two input rollors.
This allows for high accuracy inputs and is an essential part of the mouse.

Conclusion
 Overall, though the ball mouse later becomes obsolete to other types of mice such as
optical mice, which use LEDs that bounce of the surface and is recorded by the mouse, it was
still a major stepping stone in the development
of the modern day computer mouse. However, a
new concept of the ball mouse has recently
become more popular. In this new concept, the
ball is instead placed on the top of the mouse.
That ball is controlled by the users fingers as
opposed to actually moving the whole mouse.
This new design allows for an infinite range of
movement as the mouse itself isn’t moved and
the ball can be turned infinity. However, the
down sides to this is that it becomes harder to
move the cursor around in many different
directions in a small amount of time, a situation
that occurs in many video games. In the end, the
ball mouse might have slowly began to die off
due to the superior optical mouse, it still has
many implementations in modern day
computing.

Work Cited
1. Techquickie. YouTube, 9 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K-ATmU-
NbU&list=WL&index=11&t=186s.
2. Woodford, Chris. “How does a computer mouse work?” Explain that Stuff, 20 June 2017,
www.explainthatstuff.com/computermouse.html.