Optomechanical manipulators

Wico Command control trackball

In 1982, Wico introduced the trackball to the market in its Command control series of game controllers. The trackballs and joysticks in this series proved to be quite successful — they were probably the most popular game controllers of the 1980s. The manufacturer positioned this trackball as <<the best computer technology for achieving the highest results in arcade games on home consoles and personal computers>>.

Logitech LogiMouse P5

LOGIMOUSE P5 mouse was released in 1983. This is the second manipulator from Logitech (after the famous P4 mouse, production of which continued simultaneously with P5). LOGIMOUSE P5 was a cheaper model (the selling price differed by $100), and it was intended primarily for OEM supplies. But the main feature of the P5 is a radically different exterior.

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HP 46060A

The 46060A is a 2-button mouse with an HP-HIL interface introduced by Hewlett Packard in 1984 for use with the Integral and HP-150II computers. The mouse was later used with other HP computers as well.

Logitech C7 mouse

Logitech C7 mouse was released in 1985. It was the first mouse sold under the Logitech brand, and also its first mouse produced for retail (before that, company was focused on producing mice for OEM supplies). The selling price of the C7 was only $100, which was noticeably cheaper than other optomechanical mice of the time. Apparently this, along with a successful construction, made the mouse very popular among end users, despite its noticeable “squareness”

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AMX type 1

This device, along with several other manipulators, was sold by the British company Advanced Memory Systems (AMX for short) under the name <>. The AMX type 1 was introduced in 1985 and was intended for the British BBC Micro home computers. AMX did not have its own production and placed orders with other companies on a contract basis. The creator of this and almost all other varieties of AMX mice was Dubois Depraz SA.

AMX type 2

This manipulator is a representative of the second generation of AMX mice and is also produced by Depraz. The bottom of the mouse demonstrates a number of elements that originally appeared in the Depraz Digimouse P1000 mouse: a polymer ball, a removable ring for cleaning the mouse secured with a screw, and a limiter that protects the cable exit from the mouse body from damage. The AMX type 2 mouse body has a parallelepiped shape. This mouse is designed for AMSTRAD computers. The AMX Mouse box contains a set of a mouse, an interface unit, and a software cassette.

Intergraph

Optomechanical mouse with trackball. According to the connection interface, the Intergraph mouse belongs to the Bus Mouse category, which was considered an outdated version of a computer manipulator since the 90s. The peculiarity of such mice is that the optocoupler signals are processed not by a microcircuit in the mouse body, but by a special adapter (usually an ISA board) in the computer system unit. The mouse was manufactured by the Japanese company Alps.

Honeywell microLYNX trackball

The microLYNX trackball (or “µLYNX” if Greek characters are allowed), was manufactured in California by Honeywell, a subsidiary of Disc Instruments. Having appeared in 1986 or a year earlier (some of the advertising materials are dated 1985), the trackball proved to be a long-liver and subsequently withstood many incarnations as the model “LX200”, which differed in connection interfaces, electronics and were often rebranded under different company names.

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Commodore C300 mouse

The Commodore C300 mouse labeled Joystick Mouse on the box is one of the reincarnations of the Kempston Mouse released in 1986 for ZX Spectrum computers, adapted for Commodore computers. Externally, the mouse looks typical, having two buttons on top and a ball on the bottom.

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AMX type 2

One of the mice from the <> line. The design of the upper part of the body is largely close to later mice sold under the Logitech brand: the two-button model Logitech M8, and its more common three-button variation, the Logitech C7, which became the first truly mass-market computer mouse. The AMX mouse has three buttons and a beige body, as shown in the picture, containing beveled edges and an almost right angle in the wrist area, as well as contrasting red buttons.

DEC Hawley

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which used the Digital brand, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The Hawley Mouse is a type of mouse mechanism developed in the 1980s by Jack Hawley, one of the engineers involved in developing the mouse at Xerox. DEC licensed it for use in its VAX, MIPS, and Alpha VMS workstations. The DEC Hawley connected to the computer via the ACCESS.bus (A.b) interface, developed by Philips and DEC in the early 1990s based on Philips’s I²C system. It is similar in purpose to USB, in that it allows low-speed devices to be added or removed from the computer “on the fly”.

Apple Desktop Mouse

In September 1986, Apple introduced a new interface bus for connecting a mouse and keyboard: the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB). The Apple Desktop Mouse was sold only with complete Macintosh Classic, LC, and SE desktop systems for the next six years. It was introduced on the Apple IIGS computer and later became the standard mouse included with all Macintosh desktop computers. It is also considered the first Apple mouse to feature the official Snow White design.

Tektronix mouse

The Tektronix mouse is a slightly modified version of the LOGIMOUSE P7 mouse for Tektronix computers. Tektronix is ​​very well known for producing test and measurement instruments such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, video and mobile protocol testing equipment. Less well known are the computer models produced by this company, in particular the Tektronix family of workstations, which ran the Unix operating system and supported the Smalltalk programming language.

Assimilation Trackball

This trackball is a combination of a digital keyboard and a trackball, combined in one housing, and is designed to work with Apple Macintosh computers. The trackball portion of the device is based on the AP07045 Mac Turbo Touch trackball, released by Assimilation Process in 1985. This trackball is best known for being the first model released under the brand of the well-known trackball manufacturer, Kensington.

Microsoft Dove Bar Mouse

The mouse, nicknamed the “Dove Bar Mouse” by users because of the similarly shaped soap bar, went on sale in 1987, becoming the third generation of Microsoft mice. The design was developed by Microsoft in collaboration with Matrix Design (which later merged with Hovey-Kelley, the designers of the Apple Lisa mouse, to become the design company IDEO). The mouse’s production, as with previous generations of Microsoft mice, was outsourced to the Japanese company Alps. This is probably the first mouse for which the designers set the ergonomics as their main goal. First of all, this resulted in the shape of the body inspired by a sanding block, which automatically ensured a comfortable hand position, worked out on many generations of people

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AMX mouse 4

Photos of this AMX mouse, which can be roughly attributed to the 4th generation. As you can see, the mouse body is a modification of the body of the third-generation AMX mice. Based on the configuration of the buttons, one could assume that this mouse was developed before the third-generation AMX mice, and that the third generation is an improved model.

Sunnyline gray-eyed mouse

The Sunnyline gray-eyed mouse was also released by the Swiss company Depraz, but unlike the Digimouse D 86 S, it is similar in body shape and design to the 1987 AMX mouse, differing only in the number and color of the buttons. Sunnyline mice ran under DOS. Before Windows 95, DOS-class systems were the most popular operating systems for PCs, despite their limitations.

MicroSpeed FastTRAP trackball

The FastTRAP device from MicroSpeed, released in 1987, is a trackball with three buttons, as well as an additional wheel, thanks to which it can generate coordinates not along two, but along three coordinate axes – x, y, and z – that is, it supports one more coordinate plane than a mouse or tablet. The additional axis was designed primarily for users of CAD solid modeling, since the simultaneous change in three coordinate axes at once can reduce the time required to rotate an object or projection in the viewport.

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Panasoinc CV-MNM501

The mouse body is shaped like a <>, slightly narrowed on the sides for a more comfortable grip with the thumb and little finger. Panasoinc CV-MNM501 has a DIN connector and according to the connection interface belongs to the Bus Mouse category. A special feature of such mice is that the optocoupler signals are processed not by a microcircuit in the mouse body, but by a special adapter in the computer’s system unit; therefore, this mouse is powered by the computer without a separate power supply, unlike many early optical models that were connected to the IBM PC’s serial port.

Logitech ClearCase Mouse

The Logitech ClearCase Mouse also hit the market in 1988. Like the C7, the mouse was designed for computers with a serial interface; its distinctive feature is a transparent plastic case, first used for products of this type and then regularly copied by other manufacturers of mice and other computer equipment for various reasons, and even becoming the official design style of Apple products for a time in the early 2000s. In fact, this special limited edition was a testament to the great commercial success of the C7 mouse series.

Witty Mouse C400 Clear case

The Witty Mouse C400 Clear case was developed by Midasonic after the original C400, as a limited series or anniversary edition. The main feature of the mouse is the transparent case, allowing you to see the internal components of the mouse. The tradition of releasing limited editions in transparent cases was created by Logitech with the release of its ClearCase Mouse in 1988.

Hal laboratories HTB-30

The HTB-30 trackball shown in the picture was released by the Japanese company HAL Laboratory for MSX computers, and then for other families, including IBM-compatible computers. In addition to the model designation, the trackball also had its own name — “COBAUSE”. The trackball was also sold under the Sony brand: this version differed in the color of the case and was called the Sony GB-5. There is also a USB version of this trackball.

Prohance PowerMouse

The Prohance Mouse was released by Prohance Technologies inc. in 1989 as part of a family of several mice and one trackball designed for use with Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets (and some other similar applications). The concept of Prohance is to place a lot of additional buttons on the body, which, according to the developers, save the user from frequently moving his hand from the mouse to the keyboard and vice versa. The Prohance mouse contains an additional functional keyboard on the front part of the case. This model, named PowerMouse 50 on its box, has 10 function buttons, and in general their number could reach up to 40 (which was implemented due to a very elongated mouse body, similar to a TV remote control).

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Fujitsu FM Towns model 1 mouse (FMT-MO101)

In February 1989, Fujitsu announced the first model of the FM Towns family of computers, running its own Towns OS graphics system. FM Towns was a proprietary variant of the PC-compatible architecture focused on multimedia applications and games. The first FM Towns model used an Intel 80386 processor, was equipped with 1 or 2 megabytes of RAM, a CD-ROM drive, a microphone, a gamepad and a mouse. The mouse that came with this model is the Fujitsu FMT-MO101.

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Expert Mouse 4.0

The Expert Mouse is a programmable trackball for IBM PC and compatible devices, manufactured in the USA. This trackball was developed by Kensington Computer Products Group. This model is the fourth version. This trackball is connected via a PS/2 port. The Expert Mouse was a fairly high-precision, fast trackball. Its patented optical technology allowed the cursor to be positioned exactly where the user wanted it, and a feature called <> made drawing, scrolling, and selecting easier.

Aero mouse

Aero mouse is a typical example of an optomechanical manipulator of the 90s. On the upper side of the body there are three large buttons and the inscription Aero. For these three buttons on the body there is a bulge in the form of a hemisphere, presumably made for a more comfortable position in the hand.

Martian

This mouse was developed by the MOKB “Mars” (USSR) enterprise and was intended for use with home computers of that time – “Elektronika BK” (a home computer whose processor copied the command system of the PDP-11 computer – the first computer on which the Unix OS ran) and Agat (the first Soviet personal computer, an analogue of the Apple II computer). In addition to the commercial name “Martianka”, this device also had a more official name: “Coordinate Input Device” or “UVK-01”.

Mighty Track Ball TB-30

The Mighty Track Ball TB-30 is the first trackball from Mouse Systems. It is a fairly typical implementation of an optomechanical manipulator.

NPO Comet

This mouse was developed in the USSR in 1991. The device is half a sphere, with three buttons for the thumb, index and middle fingers. The mouse body is made of gray plastic. The internal structure of the Comet mouse is 2 pairs of rollers connected to each other by a shaft with holes and located perpendicular to each other. This design is completely original and is not found in any other manipulators.

A4 Tech WT-5P trackball

Like other Taiwanese manufacturers, A4 Tech, in addition to selling under its own name, actively provided its products for rebranding. As a result, this example of a trackball under the Recoton brand is the WT-5P model of A4 Tech.

Lotus Mouse

The Lotus Mouse is a typical example of an optomechanical mouse from the 90s. The mouse has an ergonomically shaped asymmetrical body and is designed for right-handed use. On the upper side of the case there are two large buttons and the word “Lotus” is written. The surface of the main mouse button is embossed to make it easier to tactilely identify.

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Cadmus mouse

The Cadmus mouse is a slightly modified version of the LOGIMOUSE P7 mouse for Cadmus computers. Under the Cadmus name, German computer manufacturer Periphere Computer Systeme (PCS) produced UNIX workstations popular in scientific research and academia. Both Cadmus and the classic LOGIMOUSE P7 are quadrature mice, so they connect to IBM-compatible computers only through a special adapter. Workstations based on other processor architectures, including Camdus, had a built-in interface for connecting a quadrature mouse.

EMAC Silhouette

The Silhouette trackball from EMAC, released in 1992, has an ergonomic design. The trackball came with four colored balls of different weights.

Evergreen Diamond XL trackball

The Diamond XL trackball was produced by the Evergreen Systems International company in California, founded in 1980 and specialized in high-quality trackballs for industrial and military applications. Diamond trackballs have been positioned as a mouse replacement in computer systems where fast and precise pointing is required (CAD/CAM, graphics, workstations, kiosks, etc.) and in industrial and military systems where a mouse is not suitable due to lack of space, harsh environment or other factors.

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Siemens Scenic Mouse

Siemens Nixdorf was the customer for this mouse, production was handled by Logitech, and the design was developed by Frog Design, also German (FROG — Federal Republic Of Germany). In addition to the unusual shape, which can be seen in the picture, and the 6P6C connector, the specimen is notable for the fact that by loosening the screws inside the case, the panel with buttons can be moved from one edge of the hemisphere to the other, adapting the mouse for the right or left hand and for convenience in general.

Truedox/Memorex trackball

The Truedox model 300 trackball was produced by Truedox Technology Corporation in Taiwan. The manufacturing company not only sold the device under its own name, but also actively provided it for rebranding, as a result of which the model 300 is more common under other names, such as Memorex or Sunnyline, than under the original brand. In particular, this copy was sold under the Memorex brand, owned by the Californian company Memtek Products inc.

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Sunnyline Green mouse

This mouse is easy to get used to. It is easy to use and accurate enough for most tasks. It is available in several nice colors. Ergonomically, the mouse is not very comfortable due to the slippery plastic, and the generally small size of the body, which does not provide sufficient support for the palm and the small height of the mouse.

Interex

This device is a variation of the QTronix Lynx90 (P/M/SS/U) mouse from Ione International. The variants differ in color and connection interface. There is also a variation of the Lynx90 with the ADB suffix, which means that the mouse is compatible with Apple devices that are equipped with this communication interface.

Kensington Thinking Mouse

The Thinking Mouse is the final part of the same line of mice as the Kensington mouse. It is also designed to work with IBM-compatible computers, and follows the same design, with minor modifications. The button area on the top of the case occupies the same area as the Kensington mouse, but their number has been increased to four.

Mouse Systems ProAgio / Genius EasyScroll Mouse

The Genius EasyScroll Mouse, also known as the Mouse Systems ProAgio Scroll Mouse, is the first mass-produced mouse with a scroll wheel. The mouse was released in 1995, five years after Mouse Systems was acquired by KYE, owner of the Genius brand.

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ExpertColor mouse

The ExpertColor mouse is a typical example of an optomechanical manipulator of the 90s. The mouse has an asymmetrical body of a complex curvilinear shape with an eye on maximum ergonomics and is designed for use with the right hand.

Gyration Gyrapoint

The Gyrapoint cursor control device was released by California-based Gyration in 1996. The company’s first portable device, the gyroscope-based coordinate entry device, the GyroEngine, was a combination of a rotating gyroscope, Gyration’s proprietary optical system, and a lightweight plastic housing. This prototype became the basis for the GyroPoint’s free-space cursor control technology. It can also function as a standard optomechanical trackball mouse.

Kensington Mouse in a Box

The Kensington Mouse in a Box is a single-button mouse that is part of the same line of mice as the Kensington mouse, but is designed to work not with IBM-compatible computers, but with Apple computers, to which it connects via the ADB bus.

Genius Kid Track

This device is an extremely large trackball. Being intended for children, the trackball has a simpler and more intuitive interface. The buttons are marked with bright colors. Particular attention is paid to the safety of the product: the use of safe materials, the absence of sharp edges or small parts that may pose a danger to children.

Qtronix Lynx 96P

This mouse is designed by Ione International. The mouse has an asymmetrical body and is designed for right-handed use. On the top side of the body there are two large buttons and the inscription Qtronix.

Lynx 97p Mouse

The mouse has a rather distinctive body due to the appearance of the buttons, and the part of the body intended for the palm of the hand has the shape of a hemisphere, quite strongly raised relative to the base of the mouse.

Trackerball ProTrack 60i trackball

The ProTrack 60i was developed by the Trackerball Company, a former division of Marconi (the creator of the very first trackball, the “trackerball”, which was developed in the 1940s to control the on-screen cursor of military radars).

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SurfMouse mouse

The SurfMouse is a typical example of a skeuomorph — a device that imitates the appearance of another object that has nothing to do with its main function. It is easy to see that in this case the appearance of a surfboard is copied.

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Tel-Mouse ZD-07

The Tel-Mouse ZD-07 was released by the Hong Kong company Shenzhen Zida Industry Co Ltd in 2000. The concept of Tel-Mouse is to combine the functions of a mouse and a telephone in one case. Tel-Mouse ZD-07 contains an additional functional dialer keyboard under a hinged cover in the back of the case: 14 buttons, identical to the keyboard of push-button telephones. The purpose of using this mouse is to be able to call other people and talk to them (using the earphone and microphone connected to the mouse).

Ball-less mouse (MUS-P241)

MUS-P241 — a computer manipulator of the Japanese company LOAS, manufactured in 2001, with a PS/2 interface. MUS-P241 was used in NEC 9800 series computers, better known by the abbreviation PC-98. This line includes 16 and 32-bit personal computers that were manufactured from 1982 to 2000.