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Graphical user interface and mouse
mouse 1968 (Engelbart); Xerox Alto 1973; Macintosh 1984· Invention or discovery· Communication & computing
Well documentedSolid records, physical evidence or scientific consensus.
Operating a computer by pointing and clicking on windows, icons and menus instead of typing commands.
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Douglas Engelbart's team at SRI built the first mouse, a wooden box on two wheels, in 1964, and showed it with windows and hypertext links in a famous 1968 demonstration in San Francisco. At Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, the Alto (1973) added a full graphical screen with overlapping windows, icons and documents that looked like printed pages. Steve Jobs saw it in 1979; Apple's Macintosh (1984) and Microsoft Windows took the idea to the mass market.
Why it mattered
It let people use computers without learning commands, opening computing to office workers, children and everyone else; touch screens later extended the same idea.
How we know
Engelbart's 1970 mouse patent, the full video of the 1968 demonstration, Xerox PARC papers, surviving Alto machines at the Computer History Museum, and Apple and Microsoft product records.
Still unknown or debated
Whether Apple copied Xerox fairly was fought in court: Apple sued Microsoft in 1988 and Xerox sued Apple in 1989; both cases largely failed.
Connections (2)
▸Personal computer was made easy by the Graphical user interface and mouseWell documented
The connection
Early PCs greeted users with a blinking prompt and needed typed commands. The graphical interface replaced commands with pictures: windows, icons, menus and a mouse pointer. Apple's Macintosh (1984) brought it to a mass market, and Microsoft Windows spread it across IBM-compatible PCs, especially Windows 3.0 (1990) and Windows 95.
When and how
Engelbart's lab at SRI in Menlo Park, 1968; Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, 1973; Apple in Cupertino, 1984; Microsoft near Seattle, 1985–1995.
How we know
Product histories and sales show PC use spreading to non-experts as graphical interfaces arrived; Windows 3.0 sold about 10 million copies in two years.
Debates and open questions
How much the interface itself drove PC adoption, versus falling prices and software like spreadsheets that sold well on text screens, is debated.
▸Graphical user interface and mouse led, via touch screens, to the SmartphoneMostly agreed
The connection
Engelbart's mouse and Xerox's windows and icons let people work by pointing at pictures instead of typing commands; Apple's Macintosh made that mainstream in 1984. The iPhone took the next step: fingers on a multi-touch glass screen replaced the mouse, with icons, pinch-to-zoom and swiping. Touch is now the most common way people use computers.
When and how
Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute, 1968; Xerox PARC, 1973; Apple in Cupertino, 1984 and 2007, after buying multi-touch firm FingerWorks in 2005.
How sure are we?
Apple's patents trace the iPhone interface to the Mac and FingerWorks' multi-touch work; Steve Jobs's 2007 keynote explicitly pitched fingers as the successor to the mouse.
Debates and open questions
Who invented multi-touch is disputed; researchers such as Bill Buxton in the 1980s and Jeff Han in 2006 showed versions before the iPhone.