The mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart, who first sketched it on April 29, 1964. The patent for the computer mouse was filed on December 17, 1970 ( application number 1738087 ) and subsequently granted to Apple Inc. (then named “Apple Computer”), IBM Corp., Microsoft Corporation, and Gauss during the same month. The earliest reported date of post-patent production is November 1008.
A readout from a 1975 MOUSE/WORD combination found in a word processor program listing suggests that this device might have been used as early as 1973. This patent originally described an intermediate device between a keyboard and whatever display system being used…and which has been called by some people the “world”…