Doug Englebart - mouse!

Paul Koning paulkoning at comcast.net
Thu Nov 17 13:43:18 CST 2016


> On Nov 17, 2016, at 2:20 PM, Rich Alderson <RichA at livingcomputers.org> wrote:
> 
> ...
> I think arguing "priority" is a pointless exercise.  In the real world, the
> mouse came to the fore with the Xerox Alto, where its use was inspired by
> Engelbart, not Telefunken, and it spread to Lisp Machines, Lisa and Macintosh
> computers, and beyond, from there.

That's a good point for history of inventions generally.  Take printing; it was arguably invented in China first, but independently in Germany later.  The later one is the one that took hold world-wide.  For that matter, writing; invented independently in at least three if not four places, but out of those only two produced offspring that spread and flourished.

	paul



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