Mouse Systems Corporation (MSC), formerly Rodent Associates, was founded in 1982 by Steve Kirsch. The company was responsible for bringing the

mouse A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

to the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a tea ...

for the first time.

History

Mouse Systems' optical mouse, wired to a

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared rad ...

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''worksta ...

and an

Atari 400 The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE ...

running '' Missile Command'', attracted many observers at the October, 1982 Mini/Micro '82 conference in

Anaheim Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orange County, the 10th-mos ...

, attended by over people—and won a "best new product" award. In 1982, MSC acquired rights to

PCPaint PCPaint was the first IBM PC-based mouse-driven GUI paint program. It was developed by John Bridges and Doug Wolfgram. It was later developed into Pictor Paint. The hardware manufacturer Mouse Systems bundled PCPaint with millions of compute ...

from Microtex Industries, the first mouse-driven image manipulation program for the IBM PC, written in assembly language by Doug Wolfgram. Mouse Systems wanted the software re-developed to look more like

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...

MacPaint MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processing counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notab ...

so Wolfgram brought in co-developer John Bridges and together they re-wrote the program in C with an updated user interface. Millions of copies were shipped, primarily bundled with all their mice until the early 1990s. KYE Systems, producer of the

Genius Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabilit ...

brand of mice, acquired Mouse Systems in 1990.

Technical details

Like all early optical mice, their debut product relied on a special metallic and reflective mousepad printed with a square grid of grey and blue tracking lines: as the device moved over the pad, light emitted by an

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (cor ...

was reflected by the pad onto an array of sensors whose output was processed by an on-board controller, which in turn supplied the host computer with machine-readable tracking data via an

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' ('' data terminal equipment'') suc ...

serial port. An external

power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a ...

was required. Some mice would derive their power supply from the keyboard connector on the motherboard and came with a pass-through connector to be inserted before the keyboard cable. Early Sun workstations used MSC optical mice exclusively. Initial models came with large mousepads with well-spaced lines, while later models were smaller and used a much tighter grid.

References

External links

* 1990 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1982 American companies disestablished in 1990 Computer companies established in 1982 Computer companies disestablished in 1990 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies {{tech-company-stub

History

Technical details

See also

References

Further reading

External links