I recently learned that German company Telefunken arguably invented the computer mouse. They offered a “Rollkugelsteuerung” (“rolling ball control”) for one of their mainframes in 1968, months before Douglas Engelbart’s “mother of all demos”. Telefunken’s mouse was also more advanced than Engelbart’s mouse as it used a ball instead of two wheels. (Photo credit:
Marcin Wichary, CC-BY 2.0, https://www.flickr.com/photos/8399025@N07/2322838281 and https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2322836557/)
Unique mouse from Telefunken, pt. 2

Flickr
Via the Stay Forever podcast, which recently had a 3-hour episode on the history of the mouse (in German): https://www.stayforever.de/2022/10/die-maus-sft-8/. They also published an interview with Rainer Mallebrein, the engineer who developed the mouse for Telefunken: https://www.stayforever.de/2022/11/die-maus-das-interview/.
Die Maus (SFT 8) | Stayforever

Der beste Spielecontroller

Stayforever
@ole that looks very interesting. It would be great if it could be translated! (Not that I'm expecting you to. Just that it'd be fascinating to listen and understand.)
@ole »Es erfolgte auch eine Patentanmeldung, das Patentamt sah aber zu geringe Erfindungshöhe« 🥸 https://owl.museum-digital.de/object/?t=listen&persinst_id=71015
Objekte [Raster] (Seite: 1) :: museum-digital:ostwestfalen-lippe

Objekte gefunden: 1. Person/Institution: Rainer Mallebrein (1933-).

@ole #StayForever Forever! one of the best #podcast|s in the known and unknown universe.