Re: Computing Editorial (please read)

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <20030122160544.13377.00000293@mb-fe.aol.com>,
Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
> 
>>In article <3E2DEDE7.93DF0FA1@ev1.net>,
>>Charles Richmond  <richmond@ev1.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> ...and Xerox PARC was "borrowing" from Doug Englebart's "Mother of All
>>Demos".
>>> After all, Englebart invented the computer mouse and patented it in 1970.
>> 
>>Nah -- the computer mouse, as well as computer color graphics, was
>>invented by a Swede named Hakan Lans:
>> 
>>http://hem.netlink.se/~sfs1434/hakan_lanseng.htm
>>http://dmoz.org/Computers/History/Pioneers/desc.html
> 
> Surely you jest, Paul.
> 
> The color graphics patent was filed January 9, 1979, long after people were
> routinely displaying color graphics generated by computers, and even using
> "frame buffers", which this patent seems to claim.
> 
> Clearly this patent is invalid due to prior art.
> 
> In the case of the mouse, it looks like another case of nearly simultaneous
> invention, though Hakan Lans seems to have envisioned it more as a tool
> for entering graphical data (drawing), while Doug Englebart clearly saw it
> primarily as a tool for pointing and selecting (since his was a text-only
> system).
> 
> I think you'd agree that the application of the modern mouse is much
> closer to what Englebart envisioned.
 
It's both really -- people draw a lot too with computers.  But in
text-based systems (which GUI's most often really is used for
nowadays, although with fancy fonts and pretty icons added), it's
of course a tool for pointing and selecting.
 
-- 
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