William Chops Westfield wrote:
> On Apr 5, 2005, at 4:27 PM, Danny Decell wrote:
> 
>>  I can't get over the fact that all that technology (taking a photo,
>> processing a pattern, DSP etc) is all going on in a mouse now.
> 
> 
> There was also a first generation optical mouse, circa 1983 or so,
> that used a much simpler technology, but required a special mouse
> pad to work.  They shipped with some of the early Sun workstations,
> but the rather cool-looking mousepads had a tendency to walk away
> on their own, as well as being relatively inconvenient and uncomfortable.

Not to mention that the needed printed pattern wore out with
much use, rendering the pad useless after 3 rotations (to get to
unworn area). It used IR and non-IR reflective inks, with
corresponding Red and IR LED's and gratings in the optical paths.
Think quadrature encoder where the stripes on the pad were
imaged onto the phototransistors in the mouse.

Robert

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