One of the first computer mouse is about to go up for auction

One of the rarer computer items – the first mass-produced computer mouse by inventor Douglas Carl Engelbart – will be auctioned off at RR Auctions. The development was announced in 1968 and first appeared as part of the Xerox Alto computer in 1973. But the real success came later, and they were very different devices.

The Engelbart mouse auctioned was a gift from the inventor to the former editor of InfoWorld, PR director of Logitech and photographer Serge Timacheff. During Timacheff’s tenure at Logitech’s headquarters in Fremont, California, Engelbart was given office space for his “institute.” In return, the company received valuable advice and comments on its flagship product at the time, computer mice. One day, Engelbart presented Timacheff with a mouse of his own design from the first batches.

The one he presented couldn’t be plugged in anywhere. The arm wire is broken, and yes, and the pairing obviously wouldn’t be that easy. The mouse has three buttons, and in this Logitech has followed it for a long time. Today no one is surprised by mice with many buttons, but in the nineties, Logitech was one of the few brands to mass-produce three-button manipulators.

A copy of the rare mouse will be auctioned off on December 17 at a starting price of $800. I wonder how much it will go for? Douglas Engelbart died in 2013 at the age of 88. The company Logitech at one time bought a license for the mice from Stanford Research Institute (SRI) for $ 40 thousand, where Engelbart worked, but the inventor himself did not get any of the money.