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The world is, inevitably, connected: “As of January 2022, there were 4,950 internet users worldwide, about 62.5 percent of the world’s population.”, according to the indicators of the Digital 2022 report carried out by the creative agency We Are Social and the Canadian platform Hootsuite; while the computer It is, so far, the second most used device to travel through the network.
With a booming digital society, the real question that arises is: What do Latin American users have in common with American, Asian, European, African and Oceanic surfers? Although it seems insoluble, the answer is in front of millions of Internet users when they immerse themselves in the dynamic and ever-changing digital universe.
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Functional for all and irrelevant for some, the computer cursor is a must-have tool which is often overlooked by users. Even so, it is used by millions of people across the globe, regardless of continent, gender or brand.
Have you ever wondered what your web browsing experience would be like if you didn’t have an indicator showing your position on a monitor or simply couldn’t interact with the objects on the screen? These are precisely some of the functions of the computer arrow, one of the best known indicators of those who surf the Internet and, perhaps, one of the most ignored.
If you are one of those who spend hours and hours in front of the computer, surely you have noticed a small detail that, at first glance, seems insignificant: the cursor arrow is always tilted. The reason? Define the fine line between functionality and invisibility.
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The arrival of the cursors
The first time in history that it was possible for a user to move around the desktop without using the keyboard is largely the feat of Douglas Engelbart, considered the father and inventor of one of the objects that revolutionized the world of computing: the computer mouse. The difference is that at that time -1960- it was not called ‘mouse’, but XY Position Indicator for a Display System; and its design was quite different from the modern peripherals that are handled today.
An electronics graduate, World War II veteran and engineering doctor from the University of California at Berkeley, Engelbart’s motto was simple: he wanted accessible technology. The Department of Defense, through Darpa -Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency- was the first institution to believe in its visionary ideal and, consequently, gave it all the support to have its own center in the Defense Research Institute of Stanford (SRI for its acronym in English), according to the monthly magazine ‘Muy Interesante’.
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Bilgisayar-insan etkileşimini sağlayan ilk bilgisayar faresi ve mucidi Douglas Engelbart pic.twitter.com/xXQjiRRXc6
— Fatma Arıcan (@FatmaArcan13) September 29, 2022
The idea of how to improve human-computer interaction was something that obsessed both Engelbart and his working group at the Augmentation Research Center, who put dozens of proposals on the table that, ultimately, sought to make life and navigation easier for humans. users by computers.
From a ‘joystick’ -hand lever- to a light pen, the inventions that crossed the minds of Engelbart and his collaborators were as numerous as they were crazy, so that what seemed like an impossible dream ended up materializing in the invention of the ‘XY Position Indicator for a Display System’, “a carved redwood block that included two wheels set in its lower part and a button in the upper part”, according to the aforementioned magazine.
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That’s how it was created the ‘mouse’, whose initial model was a kind of cube that rested on two wheels and allowed to move the pointer on the screen along one of the two axes. Later, on November 17, 1970, it was patented by Douglas Engelbart.
THE ENGINEER DOUGLAS ENGELBART WAS THE PERSON WHO CREATED THE FIRST MOUSE IN 1964 AND IT WAS MADE OF WOOD. pic.twitter.com/UJpHj1qsN7
— info by sareli (@infoby_sareli) October 4, 2022
It was not enough for the legendary inventor to create one of the great computer gadgets of the time, but he wanted to show in ‘The mother of all demos’ -a historical conference held in San Francisco- all the functions that he had developed, along to his team, over the last few years.
“For 90 minutes, the stunned audience of over a thousand professionals witnessed many of the features of modern computing for the first time: live video conferencing, document sharing, word processing, windows, and a strange pointing device jokingly referred to as ‘the mouse’. The elements of the screen were linked to others through associative links or hypertexts”, says the Computer History Museum.
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1968- Douglas Engelbart, in the so-called “The mother of all demos” presents the first videoconference in history, editing a document in real time with his Stanford classmates. pic.twitter.com/KRBRwccLUM
– Alfonso Gutiérrez (@alfonsogu) October 1, 2022
technology was to blame
With the arrival of the computer ‘mouse’ also came the arrow that is known today. The only difference is that the indicator pointed straight up and did not tilt 45 degrees, as it does today.
It was precisely Xerox, the world’s largest supplier of copier toner and accessories, that decided to go against Engelbart’s initial design. The reason? The low resolution of the screens of the time threatened to make the cursor imperceptible, almost invisible; reason why, the solution was to slightly tilt the indicator at a 45 degree angle to make it easier to recognizeaccording to the radio chain ‘RPP’.
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As the portal ‘UXpañol’ explains: “the cursor was the same size as the characters, and in fact it was one more character. Namely, it did not float in any direction like modern cursors, but instead scrolled vertically and horizontallysimilar to when using the position arrows on the keyboard”.
Decades after its invention, users still use the tilted cursor, even though high-resolution screens make it unnecessary.
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Source: Elcomercio
I have worked as a journalist for over 10 years and have written for various news outlets. I currently work as an author at 24 News Recorder, mostly covering entertainment news. I have a keen interest in the industry and enjoy writing about the latest news and gossip. I am also a member of the National Association of Journalists.
