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Comment by keypusher | Hacker News Reader

> The Pro Mouse also ditched the dust-collecting ball underneath a standard mouse in favor of an LED for fully solid-state optical tracking. "As far as I'm aware, we were the first consumer company to do that," Farag said.

Sorry, but no. From wikipedia: "The first modern optical computer mice were the Microsoft IntelliMouse with IntelliEye and IntelliMouse Explorer, introduced in 1999 using technology developed by Hewlett-Packard." Also, the Intellimouse Explorer is a legendary mouse which deserves its own article. I still own two of them and use one daily (3.0 version).

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Yeah.

But even Wikipedia got it wrong. Sun had optical mice in the 1980's and you could get a version for the PC from Hewlett Packard in 1997 that used an IR sensor.

This paper talks about the history of mice, and mentions that optical mice started in 1981. (though they required a special mouse pad) http://genevalunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/145378.pdf

I remember using one of those mid nineties - I think is was a Sun workstation. It had a metallic mouse pad with a grid pattern etched into it.

Yeah, we had these Sun ones in the lab at university back in '96(ish). They'd probably been there a few years even then.

'Course they were reliant on the special mat, and the mat had to be oriented correctly. I suppose you might say they weren't really a consumer offering though, which the article mentions. The price of Sun systems kept them in business ajd education facilities.

I'm guessing that's what the Wikipedia article means by "modern": able to work on most any surface, not just a special mat.

According to http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/xerox/star8010.shtml Xerox had an optical mouse in 1981, I know for sure it had one in 1985 because that was when I was using them.

There were three button optical mice on many SGI workstations too, if I recall

I have a working v1.0 Intellimouse Explorer that I still use. I bought it my freshman year of college (1999), and it's by far the oldest piece of electronics on my desk. Replaced the cord once (took apart a microsoft gamepad that had the same connector), but that's about it. I never understood why they made the side buttons smaller in the later revisions.

The Intellimouse Trackball V1.0 is fantastic too - only trackball I've ever seen that lets you use your index and middle fingers for the ball, your thumb for the buttons, and your ring finger for the wheel. I wish someone would make a usb, optical version of that.

I use a Kensington Expert Mouse (it's actually an optical trackball, despite the name) which fits very well with the finger arrangement you describe. I use my little finger for the right button, though; I don't know if that's a deal breaker for you.

http://www.kensington.com/kensington/us/us/p/1444/K64325/exp...

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