This old wooden mouse was sold for 178 thousand dollars.
An old wooden mouse that is considered one of the first computer mice in history, was sold for an astonishing $178,000 at an auction.
The first computer mouse that is considered the inspiration for modern mice, was produced in 1964 by researchers at Stanford Research Institute. Douglas Engelbart and his team placed two metal disks (one for horizontal movement and the other for vertical movement) into a wooden block, and added a button on top of it.
Engelbart’s early mouse prototypes are usually popular among collectors. A modified model with three buttons, along with a five-button keyboard designed for coding, was sold in an auction last week. According to PCWorld, these two devices created significant changes in the way we interact with computers.
Over time, separate metal disks gave way to a spherical piece that could detect both horizontal and vertical movements simultaneously.
The Engelbart symbolic mouse was expected to sell for $15,000 at the recent auction, but ultimately sold for $178,936. This made the Engelbart mouse more expensive than the Apple Lisa computer and the first iPhone generation.
