Macinography 11: Trackpads and the Portable Pointing Device Wars

The Icon Garden

Today, every laptop in the world comes equipped with a touchpad. But it wasn’t always that way. What came before the trackpad? What did it have to beat to be number one? And who had one first? We touch on these complicated questions on this installment of Macinography.

Sources / Notes:

• CHM Oral History - David Levy
• CHM Oral History - George Gerpheide
• CHM Oral History - Arthur Porter
• CHM Oral History - Ted Selker
• CHM Oral History - Federico Faggin
• CHM Oral History - Robert Miller
• CHM Oral History -Neil Hancock
• CHM Oral History - Rainer Mellebrain
• The first rolling-ball mouse · e-basteln
• Briton: ‘I invented the computer mouse 20 years before the Americans’ - Telegraph
• Oral-History:Ralph Benjamin - Engineering and Technology History Wiki
• Doug’s 1968 Demo - Doug Engelbart Institute
• PC Mag - Google Books
• Interview with David Thornburg
• Macworld July 1994
• Macuser July 1994, September 1994
• InfoWorld November 7, 1994
• Microsoft Buxton Collection

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