'the computer mouse' was produced by Xerox for their STAR System and first revealed to Jobs...
...and "The Woz" at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC Facility).
I worked with 2 Human Factors engineers back in '91, who worked at PARC. We went on to found the 1st GUI-based SFA software application (SalesForceAutomation) in the U.S.
Released on April 27, 1981, the Xerox Star was developed at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and was the first commercial product to package PARC’s GUI innovations into a networked office environment. The Xerox Star (8010 Information System) was the first commercial workstation to combine a mouse-driven graphical user interface, bitmapped display, Ethernet networking, and integrated office automation features, introduced in 1981.
It was designed for office automation—producing, retrieving, distributing, and organizing documents, graphics, tables, databases, and email—within a networked environment of workstations, file servers, and printers.
Its innovations included:
- Bitmapped display with icons and windows
- Mouse-driven interface (two-button)
- Ethernet networking
- File and print servers
- Email capabilities
The actual inventor of the mouse was Douglas Engelbart. Engelbart applied for a patent in 1967 and received it in 1970, for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse – U.S. patent 3,541,541), which he had developed with Bill English, his lead engineer, sometime before 1965. DARPA gave him funding $$$.
A nerd from PARC invited Jobs and Wozniak to PARC and showed them a rectangular box with 2 buttons and a cord (mouse tail) that hooked up to a computer.
The screen had a Graphic User Interface (GUI) and when he moved the "mouse " (box), an arrow moved around the monitor screen. There were several graphic folders on the screen and he clicked one that was titled "Documents".
The folder contained multiple file names, listed in alpha/numeric order. He then proceeded to click the arrow onto one of the docs (files) and it opened into a facsimile of a paper document on the monitor screen. He then clicked on an icon that started a printer across the room. It was hard-wired, via coaxial cable to the computer.
He then retrieved the doc and showed it to Jobs/Woz. The two of them had created the Apple prototype hardware but were stymied as to how to create software to run the system.
Jobs later stated that when he and Woz got in their car, they both blurted out, "We found our software!!!".
Xerox did a poor job of marketing this system and it was very costly. The Star was intended as a networked office system, not a standalone machine—requiring Ethernet, file server, and print server to function.
Star sold fewer than 2,000 units due to its high cost and the emergence of cheaper PCs from Apple, IBM, and others. However, its GUI, mouse, and networking concepts were widely adopted, shaping modern computing. Xerox later sued Apple in 1989, alleging the Lisa and Macintosh Finder borrowed from Star’s interface.