First conceived by Dr Douglas Engelbart and aided by Bill English -- who would later design the first "ball mouse" -- at the Stanford Research Institute in 1965, the mouse was first used commercially by Xerox in their "Star Workstation" computer made in 1981.

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It is operated from a computer workstation, rather than by traditional aircraft controls, and has an automatic landing system.

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"It's going to be a little bit different in a couple of years, waking up in the morning and sitting in a freshman English class rather than going to my computer workstation and hacking code all day, " Brockman said.

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