Computer mouse facts for kids

Many mice have two buttons and a scroll wheel.

A computer mouse is a handy tool that helps you control your computer. It's a small device you move on a flat surface, and as you move it, a little arrow called a cursor moves on your computer screen. You can click buttons on the mouse to choose things, open programs, or move items around.

It's called a computer mouse because the wire that connected the first ones to the computer looked like a mouse's tail! Today, many computer mice use wireless technology, so they don't have a wire at all.

How the Computer Mouse Was Invented

Creator of the first mouse, Douglas Engelbart.

Back in 1964, a smart researcher named Douglas Engelbart (who lived from 1925 to 2013) wanted to make computers easier to use. In those days, computers were huge and very expensive. It was also really hard to use them because you had to type everything by hand. If you made a mistake, it was tough to fix!

Douglas Engelbart worked hard for a long time. He finally invented a new device that he called the 'XY index'. This was the very first computer mouse.

At first, you needed two hands to use it. But soon, it was changed so that only one hand was needed. This new design was much more like the mouse we use today. In 1981, a company called Xerox Palo Alto Research introduced a new way to use computers with pictures and icons, called a GUI, and it used a mouse!

Early Apple II mouse with a single button

The mouse became even more popular when the Macintosh computer from Apple Inc. came out in 1984. Later, when Microsoft Windows was released, it also used the mouse. Because of this, computer mice became a common tool for almost all computers. Most modern mice have three buttons: a left button, a right button, and a scroll button.

How You Use a Computer Mouse

On most computers, you move the mouse to make the cursor on the screen move in the same direction. To pick something on the screen, you move the cursor to it and then "click" the left mouse button.

The right mouse button is used to open special menus. What appears in the menu changes depending on where your cursor is. Other mouse buttons can do different things, depending on the software you are using. Most mice have at least two buttons to click.

Most mice also have a "scroll wheel." This is a small wheel located between the two main mouse buttons. You can roll this wheel back and forth to "scroll" through things like a website or a folder. "Scrolling" means moving the words or pictures up or down on the screen. This lets you see other parts of the page. You can also press the scroll wheel down to click it like another button.

Related pages

• Touchpad
• Trackball
• Touchscreen
• Mousepad

Images for kids

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  A computer mouse with the most common features: two buttons (left and right) and a scroll wheel (which also functions as a button)

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  A typical wireless computer mouse

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  A computer mouse is named for its resemblance to the rodent.

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  The Engelbart mouse

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  Early mouse patents. From left to right: Opposing track wheels by Engelbart, November 1970, U.S. Patent 3,541,541 . Ball and wheel by Rider, September 1974, U.S. Patent 3,835,464 . Ball and two rollers with spring by Opocensky, October 1976, U.S. Patent 3,987,685 

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  Bottom side of the Telefunken Rollkugel RKS 100-86 showing the ball

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  HP-HIL Mouse from 1984

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  Mechanical mouse, shown with the top cover removed. The scroll wheel is gray, to the right of the ball.

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  Hawley Mark II Mice from the Mouse House

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  The underside of an optical mouse.

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  A vertical mouse

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  Keyboard with roller bar mouse

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  A Logitech G703 gaming mouse, with two buttons at the front and two buttons on the side

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  A Microsoft wireless Arc Mouse, marketed as "travel-friendly" and foldable but otherwise operated exactly like other 3-button wheel-based optical mice

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  Xerox Alto mouse

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  Signals XA and XB in quadrature convey X-direction motion, while YA and YB convey Y-dimension motion; here the pointer (cursor) is shown drawing a small curve.

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  Apple Macintosh Plus mice: beige mouse (left), platinum mouse (right), 1986

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  Color-coded PS/2 connection ports; purple for keyboard and green for mouse

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  A USB connector soon superseded the PS/2 keyboard and computer mouse connectors shown above

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  Razer Mouse with additional buttons

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  Computer mice built between 1986 and 2007

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  Logitech G5 laser mouse designed for games, with adjustable weights (on left)

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  Sega Dreamcast mouse

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  Logitech spacemouse 3D. On display at the Bolo Computer Museum, EPFL, Lausanne

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  Silicon Graphics SpaceBall model 1003 (1988), allowing manipulation of objects with six degrees of freedom.

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  Logitech 3D Mouse (1990), the first ultrasonic mouse

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  A modern six-degrees-of-freedom (6 DOF) 3D mouse (2007)

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  Mechanism of the modern 6 DOF mouse consisting of infrared LEDs and detectors with occluders that move with the ball

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  The Axsotic 3D-Spheric-Mouse (6D) is the first 3D-Mouse that separates rotation and translation in finger and hand-wrist movements.

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  The Logitech Metaphor, the first wireless mouse (1984). On display at the Musée Bolo, EPFL

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  An older Microsoft wireless mouse made for notebook computers

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  Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Mouse 3600

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  A wireless Apple mouse

See also

In Spanish: Ratón (informática) para niños