1963-64: Englebart's first mouse
1966: Orbit X-Y Ball Tracker
1968: Englebart's NLS mouse
1970s ??: Mystery wheel mouse
1973: Alto I [2]
1975: Hawley Laboratories
1981: Xerox 8010 Star [2]
1982: VisiOn GUI; Mouse Systems; KoalaPad
1983: Hawley Mark II X063X; Lisa; Microsoft bus mouse
1984: Macintosh; Microsoft serial mouse
1985: NeXT Computer
1986: Hawley DEC mouse; GEOS GUI; Atari ST mouse; Commodore 1350 Mouse
1987: IBM PS/2; Microsoft 'dove bar' mouse
1996: USB (Universal Serial Bus)
1997: Microsoft PC 97 standard

oldmouse.com

The Xerox Alto Mouse

The three button Alto mouse enabled the first bitmapped and overlapping windows display, known as a graphical user interface (GUI). The Alto dates to March of 1973. It looks like a small slightly swelled and rounded rectangular beige plastic box with three large lozenze shaped buttons that appear to run together. "The buttons are named red, yellow, and blue, although the physical buttons are all black." [Byte 1981]

John Bordynuik, who furnished these detailed photos, provides further extensive photos online of his completely refurbished Alto I computer. He explains, "This mouse is from an original hand-built Xerox Alto-1 computer. …only 200 Palo-Alto Xerox Alto-1's were built in 1972."

The Alto I mouse registers movement by its large steel ball at its cord end. The ball's relative position determines the placement of the cursor on the computer screen. Bill English managed the development of the mouse for the first Alto computer [Comuter History Museum]. Jack Hawley worked on this mouse for SRI (Stanford Research Institute) and later recycled much of its mechanical design for his 1983 Mark II X063X mouse. The Alto I mouse's motherboard is embossed with "M-3" and "HAWLEY-XEROX MOUSE," along with the circuit board wire outlines marked with plus (+) and minus (-) poles.

Notice inside the mouse three black switch boxes with red switches which the mouse buttons activate. Drums and brushes for the X and the Y axes send signals to the computer when the large ball bearing moves. The tracking ball is housed in a metal case with bearings. Two smaller ball bearings at the wrist edge within the bottom plate of the mouse act as gliders. A thin black electrical cord attaches the mouse to the Alto with a DB9 pins connector. Some photos show a different connector probably used to adapt to different machines.

A later version of the Alto mouse looks identical to the original 3-button mouse on top but it uses an optical design. The bottom of that mouse looks like the later Star optical mouse.

The underside of the Alto I mouse reveals one large ball and two smaller balls for gliders
Alto I mouse underside
Photo: © 2005 John Bordynuik

The Alto I mouse is small beside a Microsoft optical mouse
Alto I mouse beside a modern Microsoft mouse
Photo: © 2005 John Bordynuik