In 1963 Douglas C. Engelbart (1925–), working at the Stanford Research Institute, was investigating different ways for humans to communicate with computers. He thought that a pointing device, something that a computer user could move by hand causing a corresponding movement in an object on the screen, would be easier to use and more intuitive than the existing keyboard. The computer mouse made its debut in 1968 at a computer conference in San Francisco, but it was not widely used until the introduction of personal computers in the 1980s. Since then, it has become a very popular pointing device for operating environments that provide graphical user interfaces (GUIs).

The mouse is used in conjunction with the keyboard to perform tasks such as moving and pointing to objects displayed on the screen, selecting commands from menus, and working with drawing and painting programs. A mouse ﾀ has one, two, or three buttons that...