For some reason I am feeling a little nostalgic today, so here's a little history lesson on the birth of our right-hand (most of us) man - the Mouse.

Douglas Engelbart, a scientist at the Stanford Research Institute, in Menlo Park, California, is credited with conceiving and soon after inventing, the computer mouse in the early 1960s. It was originally called the "Bug."

Long before carpal tunnel and the ergonomic revolution, this little log was created to show the possibilities of controlling what we now consider to be basic functions of workstation based computing. In 1968 Engelbart, armed with a keyboard and mouse, demonstrated the NLS online system and showed the world how one might create, cut, copy and paste text. All this while I was just a twinkle in my old man's eye.

Wired's Gadgets blog has an "Evolution of the Mouse" segment with a slide show of some of the best and worst incarnations of the little beast.

If you have Real Player you can watch the entire 90-minute presentation of Doug Engelbarts NLS online system demonstration in segments, as it happened in 1968.