Before the mouse, how did you draw on the computer?

The mouse is an indispensable tool for computer drawing, this is due to the fact that all popular applications use the pointer to generate their graphics. However, this only became popular after 1983 when Microsoft released its first version of Word with the first mouse and Apple released its failed Lisa Computer, a precursor to the Macintosh and its Lisa Draw program, which was enhanced by Bill’s Mac Paint. Atkinson. Which brings us to the next question. Did drawing programs exist? Well yes, and you will be surprised at the technology used to draw on the screen.

The technology to draw before the mouse, the Light pen

By now the arcades are in disuse, but surely more than one has played the classic small arms game. From classic Virtua Cop and House of the Dead the SEGA, to Namco’s Time Crisis. Older fans will remember the light gun game from the NES. The one who when you failed the dog laughs at you. Well, the technology behind these gaming peripherals is the technology used in the early 80s to draw on a computer on a device dubbed at the time luminous pen.

The idea is none other than to draw on the screen and on the parts where we passed the pencil, these have been drawn. Its operation was simple, but it could only be found with tube screens. When the electron beam passed where the pencil was, a light sensor caught it and sent the signal. Since the electron beam operates at a fixed speed in CRT displays, we could accurately calculate which pixel we were pointing at on the screen.

The idea is simple to say the least, however, when the mouse appeared, it fell into disuse. The reason for this is that at one time everyone had a mouse on their computer and very few people had a Light Pen. However, that wasn’t the only reason they disappeared, but there were other reasons that gave the one-life pointer the edge over its predecessor.

Why did I stop using it?

While the NTSC and PAL standards lasted for decades on TVs, the need for clearer, higher resolution displays with graphics standards like first EGA and then VGA rendered many early 1980s Light Pens obsolete. , which had to adapt to the use of the time of the new screens. . That is, the operating mechanism was the same, but the times were different.

If we were to set ourselves in the mid-1980s, it would be completely counter-intuitive to think that the mouse would end up being the input device for drawing to continue to dominate to this day. However, there are a number of reasons why the mouse eventually replaced the stylus for graphic design on computers. The most important were:

• Its use does not cover the screen and you also end up dirtying it more than your fingers.
• We can use the same cursor to scroll through menus, different toolbars and draw.
• It’s much more relaxing to move the mouse than to hold the stylus or Light Pen.
• With a mouse, the position of the screen must be between the ideal compromise between comfort of use and comfort of vision.
• You cannot embed physical buttons on the Light Pen like you can on a mouse.

Today’s pencils are a different technology

Indeed, as we no longer use tube screens on a daily basis, its mechanism can no longer be used with LCDs which change the color of all the pixels in unison and there is no longer a beam crossing the screen. high speed. The pencils to be used to draw on your tablet or directly on the screen of your computer, tablet or mobile are based on the fact that your fingers generate a reaction due to temperature, so what the new optical pencils do is to send heat to the area the tip passes through.