--- title: Where Did Your Mouse Come From? | daily.dev description: A lecture from Vintage Computer Festival Berlin traces the pointing device's history from its earliest forms to the 1990s, when mice became commoditized. The... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/where-did-your-mouse-come-from--sye4vajf7 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Where Did Your Mouse Come From? | daily.dev og:description: A lecture from Vintage Computer Festival Berlin traces the pointing device's history from its earliest forms to the 1990s, when mice became commoditized. The... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/where-did-your-mouse-come-from--sye4vajf7 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/SYE4vAJf7.png og:image:alt: Where Did Your Mouse Come From? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Where Did Your Mouse Come From? **[Hackaday](https://daily.dev/sources/hackaday)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A lecture from Vintage Computer Festival Berlin traces the pointing device's history from its earliest forms to the 1990s, when mice became commoditized. The first pointing device was a trackball built for a 1950s Canadian warship, with a surprisingly modern optical encoder. Douglas Engelbart's 1966 wooden-block mouse had a stylish rival the same year from Telefunken. The talk also reveals that Sun's spotty-pad mice were actually made by Mouse Systems, and covers the first Microsoft and Apple mice plus some poor 8-bit computer designs. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What was the first computer pointing device, before Engelbart's mouse? The first pointing device was a trackball built for a 1950s Canadian warship, featuring a surprisingly modern-looking optical encoder. This predates Douglas Engelbart's famous 1966 wooden-block mouse prototype with its pair of wheels and potentiometers, which was demonstrated publicly in his 1968 'Mother of All Demos'. _Dig into more computing history deep dives like this one on daily.dev._ ### Did Sun Microsystems actually make the mice with the spotty mouse pads? No, those mice with the spotty mouse pad were not made by Sun at all. They were actually manufactured by Mouse Systems, despite commonly being associated with Sun workstations. _Track down obscure hardware origin stories like this one on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [What is a Bus Mouse? A Technical History of Early Microsoft Mouse Interfaces](https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-a-bus-mouse-a-technical-history-of-early-microsoft-mouse-interfaces-axgqebihp) · Two Stop Bits · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Useful Personal Computer](https://daily.dev/posts/the-useful-personal-computer-qdvoom3yb) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Peripherals Hacks](https://daily.dev/posts/peripherals-hacks-6o0etfzbc) · Hackaday · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#hardware](https://daily.dev/tags/hardware), [#computing-history](https://daily.dev/tags/computing-history) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/where-did-your-mouse-come-from--sye4vajf7) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Where Did Your Mouse Come From?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/where-did-your-mouse-come-from--sye4vajf7","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/where-did-your-mouse-come-from--sye4vajf7"},"datePublished":"2026-10-27T18:00:52.090Z","dateModified":"2026-10-27T18:35:05.096Z","description":"A lecture from Vintage Computer Festival Berlin traces the pointing device's history from its earliest forms to the 1990s, when mice became commoditized. 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This predates Douglas Engelbart's famous 1966 wooden-block mouse prototype with its pair of wheels and potentiometers, which was demonstrated publicly in his 1968 'Mother of All Demos'. Dig into more computing history deep dives like this one on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Did Sun Microsystems actually make the mice with the spotty mouse pads?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"No, those mice with the spotty mouse pad were not made by Sun at all. They were actually manufactured by Mouse Systems, despite commonly being associated with Sun workstations. Track down obscure hardware origin stories like this one on daily.dev."}}]} ```