History of the Computer Mouse Timeline

The Rollkugel device was finished in early 1968 and was commercially offered later that year alongside light pens and trackballs for AEG-Telefunken systems.

On 2 October 1968, AEG-Telefunken showed the Rollkugelsteuerung in a sales brochure as an optional input device for the SIG 100 vector graphics terminal.

While working at Xerox PARC, Bill English created a ball mouse in 1972, replacing the earlier wheel-based sensing approach with a rolling ball.

Several Rollkugel mice were installed at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich in 1972. Multiple examples have since been preserved in museums.

The Xerox Alto, designed for individual use in 1973, is regarded as the first modern computer to use a mouse.

Image source: Xerox Alto

Beginning in 1975, Jack Hawley, operating as The Mouse House in Berkeley, California, manufactured ball mice and wheel mice for Xerox.

The Lilith computer was developed by a team around Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zürich between 1978 and 1980 and included a mouse.

Sun Microsystems, Symbolics, Lisp Machines Inc., and Tektronix began shipping workstations with mice at about this time.

Around 1981, Xerox included mice with the Xerox Star, building on the mouse developed for the Alto at Xerox PARC.

Image source: Xerox Star

The Xerox 8010 Star, released in 1981, included the third marketed version of an integrated mouse shipped as part of a computer for personal navigation.

Logitech introduced the P4 Mouse at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas in 1982, marking the company's first hardware mouse.

By 1982, the Xerox 8010 was probably the best-known computer equipped with a mouse.

Microsoft shipped its mouse in 1983, beginning the company's Microsoft Hardware division.

The Macintosh 128K, released in 1984 with an updated single-button Lisa Mouse, helped move the mouse from relative obscurity into widespread use.

Image source: Macintosh 128K

The Classic Mac OS Desk Accessory Puzzle, released in 1984, was the first game designed specifically for a mouse.

Image source: Classic Mac OS

From the mid-1980s, aftermarket mice became available for many 8-bit home computers, including the Commodore 64 and 128, MSX, Acorn BBC Micro and Electron, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC.

The mouse remained relatively obscure until the Macintosh, Amiga 1000, and Atari ST. By 1986, mice were also associated with the Atari ST, Amiga, Windows 1.0, GEOS for the Commodore 64, and Apple IIGS.

In 1988, the VTech Socrates educational video game console offered a wireless mouse with an attached mouse pad as an optional controller for some games.

In November 2008, Logitech built its billionth mouse, marking the enormous scale reached by the modern mouse industry.

Image source: Logitech

In 1985, René Sommer added a microprocessor to Nicoud's and Guignard's design. The innovation made the mouse more intelligent, although Mouse Systems had incorporated microprocessors into optical mice by 1984.

The Logitech 3D Mouse, introduced in 1990, was the first ultrasonic mouse and an isotonic three-dimensional mouse with six degrees of freedom.

Nintendo's 1992 game Mario Paint made extensive use of the mouse's capabilities, demonstrating its value as a creative and gaming interface.

The ability to surf the internet using a touch-enabled mouse was first developed in 1996 and later implemented commercially by the Wingman Force Feedback Mouse.

The Wingman Force Feedback Mouse commercially implemented touch-enabled internet control, extending the mouse beyond cursor positioning with physical feedback.

In 2000, Logitech introduced the iFeel Mouse, developed by Immersion Corporation. A small actuator enabled it to generate simulated physical sensations.

Image source: Haptic technology

At the end of the twentieth century, digitizer mice, or pucks, equipped with magnifying glasses were used with AutoCAD to digitize blueprints.

In 2008, Motion4U introduced OptiBurst, an infrared-tracking system intended for use as a Maya graphics-software plugin.

Image source: Motion capture

On 5 June 2025, Nintendo released the Joy-Con 2 controller, which provides mouse control for the Nintendo Switch 2.

The 1985 Sun-3 workstations shipped with a ball-based bus mouse connected through a three-pin mini-DIN socket.

In 1986, Apple introduced the Apple Desktop Bus, allowing up to 16 devices, including mice, to be daisy-chained without configuration.

With the IBM PS/2 personal-computer series in 1987, IBM introduced the eponymous PS/2 port for mice and keyboards, which other manufacturers rapidly adopted.

The 1987 Acorn Archimedes line retained quadrature-encoded mice but used its own proprietary nine-pin mini-DIN connector.

By 2009, Linux distributions and other X.Org-based systems such as OpenSolaris and FreeBSD supported up to 255 cursors or input points through Multi-Pointer X.