1996 — Kensington Expert Mouse Trackball 5.0

In 1996, Kensington released its fifth Expert Mouse Trackball. The trackball has undergone a significant redesign. While previous models were fairly classic two-button devices, the Expert Mouse Trackball 5.0 is equipped with a larger diameter ball and four large buttons arranged symmetrically around the ball, similar to flower petals. A similar model was released for the Macintosh, which was predictably…

1991 — MicroSpeed PC-TRACK trackball

MicroSpeed’s PC-TRACK trackball, released in 1991, has a significantly better ergonomic design than the company’s previous model, the FastTRAP trackball. This trackball has a symmetrical design, suitable for both right- and left-handers. The trackball is big. MicroSpeed chose a 2.25-inch ball for this device because their research showed a significant increase in cursor positioning accuracy with a larger ball. Studies…

1986 — 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…