20 years ago, Microsoft forever changed the way we use the mouse.

Twenty years ago, in April 1999, Microsoft updated its IntelliMouse line of peripheral input devices. At first glance, there were not so many differences - the new mouse had several buttons and a scroll wheel - but in fact the company presented the technology to the masses that ended the prehistoric era of cleaning mice from dirt.

At that moment I was in college in the third year, and in connection with my training in digital technology, I spent many hours using Photoshop 5.5, which was bought at the very best student discount. My classes did not depend on textbooks, with the result that I had money for expensive photo editing software and a powerful desktop computer for that time (although by today's standards it is ridiculous - 16 MB of memory!). But in my budget did not fit the trendy Wacom tablet, which was mainly bought by professionals who could afford such luxury. And I had to use a mouse, whose work at that time relied on an archaic rubber-coated metal ball that transmitted hand movements to the cursor on the screen.

If you worked on a computer a couple of decades ago, you can certainly sympathize with me. The mouse worked as it should, but the downside of pulling a hard ball was that it collected the dirt accumulated in the device, clogging up the sensors and quickly causing the manipulator - and my cursor - to start working intermittently. I was terribly annoyed. Working on a project late at night, I usually cleaned the mouse every 15 minutes, and even scraping the table clean or rubbing the mouse pad every few days, I could not solve this problem. The small mouse movements necessary for accurate work in Photoshop did not work, and I must admit that I quite often hit the table with indignation (after all, this approach always solves technical problems, doesn't it?)
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Everything changed on April 14, 1999, when at the COMDEX exhibition (no longer being held) in Las Vegas, similar to today's CES, Microsoft introduced its IntelliMouse Explorer : a mouse that swapped a dirty ball with LEDs and a digital camera that could optically track mouse movements with extreme precision.

I don’t remember where I first saw the mention of the IntelliMouse Explorer - it’s very likely that the mention of it appeared in Popular Science magazine - but when I started selling it several months later, in October, I was among the first in line. It cost $ 75, and here, in Canada, even more than $ 100, and was extremely expensive for a computer mouse, but at that moment I would give my kidney for such an upgrade.

Microsoft was far from the first company to integrate optical tracking into the mouse. This approach emerged in 1980, when a couple of inventors came up with two different approaches to tracking mouse movements using image processing. For the first time, this technology went on sale with the Xerox STAR office computer in 1981, but its price tag of $ 16,500 - and by today's money it is $ 45,000 - said that it was a computer only for enterprises. Decades later, companies like Sun Microsystems equipped their equally expensive servers and workstations with a laser sensor, but their use often required special reflective mats. The average user did not want to jump through all these hoops.

Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer, made on the basis of technology developed by Hewlett-Packard, had a price tag that was justified even for such cramped students as I was. In addition, the lower part of the mouse was completely airtight, which did not allow even a speck of dust to penetrate into its insides, and the improvements in comparison with the predecessors allowed it to work on almost any non-too reflective surface. I remember when I returned to my dorm room and for the first time I connected Explorer to a computer, thinking about people who have super modern computers, for which the adapter from PS2 to USB was included with the mouse. In the process, I encountered several problems with installing drivers on Windows 98, but when it worked, I launched Photoshop and plunged into the most enjoyable process of using everything I've ever felt. The problem was solved.

In addition to the optical sensor that changed everything, IntelliMouse Explorer had a couple of additional programmable buttons, which at first seemed unnecessary to me, but it soon became indispensable for browsing the web, allowing me to quickly jump back and forth between sites (the tabs had not yet been invented). Microsoft's competitors took a little time to introduce their optical mice after it. Mouse from Apple appeared a year later, in 2000, and in 2004 Logitech released a laser mouse. A huge number of additional buttons will soon become the standard for the industry, and companies will compete with each other for the most accurate optical tracking technology to please the picky gamers on the PC.

I can count on the fingers the cases when the technology drastically improved my life - often technological innovations only complicate the situation (yeah, I tell you this, iPhone). But 20 years later, I can say that IntelliMouse Explorer was an update that changed everything and had no flaws.