THE MOUSE RAN UP THE CLOCK; COMPUTER ACCESSORY TURNS 30.

Byline: Martha Mendoza Associated Press 

It's been hailed as the bridge between our physical world and the virtual life inside our computers, and criticized as a cause of very sore wrists. The inventor says it's just a nifty device, but here in Silicon Valley it continues to evolve.

Happy birthday, mouse. Today, the little computer gizmo turns 30.

Although it didn't start showing up on desks until the mid-1980s, the mouse was first unveiled in public in 1968 at a computer conference as the best ``pointing device'' to help computer users interact with their machines. It beat out track balls, light pens and small tablets.

The stubby, hockey puck-size block with a button impressed attendees, who liked the idea of a device outside a computer that moves things around inside the computer. Inventor Douglas Engelbart said he can't remember who named it a mouse, but with its small, rodent-like shape and wire of a tail coming out the back, it certainly seemed fitting.

The mouse didn't make it big until it was attached in 1984 to Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh computers. From there it moved on to work with Microsoft's Windows and virtually all other computers.

At Logitech, the world's largest maker of the mouse, Chief Executive Officer Guerrino De Luca is looking beyond pumping out 50 million of the devices a year. He's dreaming about a mousefree world to come.

``Someday the cursor on your screen will move with your eyes,'' he said.

Last year, 90 million mice were produced, mostly in China and Mexico, and sold around the world. Most of them are beige, matching the color of most personal computers, but some are decorated to look like real mice.

And they've spawned an allied industry, mouse pads, designed to make use smoother and more efficient. Companies of all kinds put their logos on pads and give them away as freebies, and people have pictures of their children, cats and dogs imprinted on them.

One inadvertent and unfortunate result of the mouse proliferation showed up soon after the device made it to users' desks - repetitive strain injury. Office workers began to complain that their arms were in constant pain. Doctors found that the problem - often tendinitis leading to carpal tunnel syndrome - came from endlessly manipulating the mouse.

In industrialized countries, repetitive-strain injury resulting from intensive work with computers is becoming a major cause of disability, according to Jeanne Mager Stellman, a Columbia University professor and editor of The Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety. More than 70 percent of sufferers are women.

The solution for Logitech and other smaller mouse sellers has been to improve the shape of the device, said De Luca. These days the cutting-edge mice are shaped to cup comfortably in users' hands, move more easily and at different angles.

De Luca said the devices will continue to evolve, but they won't be replaced. They are already an intrinsic part of our society.

Young children know what mice are and what they do. Anyone who works at a desk in this country reaches to touch it dozens of times a day. Common users no longer stop to think about when they're using one.

``It's an instinctive gesture now,'' said De Luca. ``You see something on the screen, and your hand moves.''

Engelbart, 73, who works out of Logitech's Fremont headquarters, is a Silicon Valley pioneer who was among a handful of high-tech trailblazers at the Stanford Research Institute in the late 1950s.

Throughout his career, he has added crucial technologies to the computer world: the mouse, multiple windows, multitool integration, two-dimensional display editing, hypermedia and more.

Engelbart says he's excited that the mouse has become so widespread. But he says that while he comes up with ways to make computers easier to use, he really has much loftier concerns.

``The real question I've been working these past 50 years on is how to augment the human intellect through collective thinking,'' he said.

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) Logitech big cheese Guerrino De Luca, left, and mouse inventor Douglas Engelbart sit with several of the designs from over the years of the computer-access device.

Julie Stupsker/Associated Press

(2--Color) A modern-day counterpart sits with an original mouse, the design of which was unveiled 30 years ago.