If I were to come and take your computer mouse away from you, what all could you do on your computer? On today’s computers, not much. You can use the arrow keys to move the curser around to an icon of a program that you want to open and then press the enter key. So far so good, but most programs today require a mouse or some kind of pointing device. Back in the old, old days, data was entered via a keyboard and punch cards.
OK, I am again going to show my age. When I got my first computer, a mouse was not part of the system, although they had been invented. Therefore, I bought a digitizer board to use with it, since I had one of the first AutoCAD programs and the digitizer had its own mouse or pen, which ever you preferred. The mouse (it was not called that) on the digitizer had a clear glass circle on it with cross-hairs in the circle along with two buttons; one for selection and one for enter, just like today’s mouse does. I suppose the cross-hairs were used for tracing something. Even way after the mouse became popular, I still used the digitizer for engineering drawing work because it was much more accurate.
“What brought this on” you may ask. Well, I just bought a new mouse and plugged it in. When I would just move it a small amount the curser would jump across the screen. Dang, got to do something about that. So, I went to the control panel and found the mouse settings and slowed the thing way down. This is the first time I ever had this happen with a new mouse. Either they are getting faster or I am getting slower or both. If it starts speeding up again, I am going to get me a mouse trap for sure.
You all have a good weekend now, you hear? Yes, of course we are heading off to the flea market again.
One of the first "computers" I played with was really a game console that hooked into the TV and used Cassette tapes to load games.I managed to rewire a game controller to function as a pointer (mouse) and had to wirte a program to make it work. Talking B&W pre-windows stuff here.
ReplyDeleteFirst computer I had was a Commodore 64 what didn't have no mouse. The only mouse I knowed bout was the one over there in the corner laugh'n at me as I was try'n to program stuff. I got the last laugh when I programmed a talk'n spell checker for my daughters spell'n words from school. Professor Commodore would ask her to spell the word an' she would type it in. If she spelled it correctly, Professor would say..."Very good Angela".
ReplyDeleteBen, I sure did like the pre-windows days. DOS was easy to understand. When Windows first came out I always said that "I don't do windows". Then afer a couple of years, my engineering software would only run on windows.
ReplyDeleteBB, I bet you could have made a living as a computer programmer. Things were so much simpler back then.
It's pretty amazing what changes have come along since this whole thing started!
ReplyDeleteNow days it's hard to keep up with them all! Just imagine what the next few years will bring!
HJ, some of the stuff out now is way over my head. I use a cell phone to talk on, only!! Guess I am old fashioned, up to a point.
ReplyDelete