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From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Mouse cord nuisance from lap (was Re: Monitors: What Next?)
Summary: Erasing floppy disks
Keywords: induction, magnetic coupling, corrdless mouse
Message-ID: <1425@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 30 Nov 88 18:17:41 GMT
References: <15572@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <16891@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <31811@bbn.COM> <2184@iscuva.ISCS.COM>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 22


Hmm, using inductuive coupling to power the mouse...  Where I used
to work, we had a big Summagraphics tablet.  It was pretty old, and
used a pretty strong magnetic field to scan the tablet.  We had
lots of incidents where poeple would forget and discover that their
DEC RX-50 8" disks they had thrown carelessly onto the tablet were
wiped clean.

Now, of course, the optical disk used in the NeXT system has a
magnetic coercivity much, much higer than the average floppy
diskette, so this is not likely to be much of a problem.

I don't mind the cord too much, but I sure would like to be able to
get rid of the mechanical wheels and/or the mouse plate.  You might
be able to make a mouse with interferometry techniques as are used
in fiberoptic avionic gyro systems.  But then, the mouse would
probably be kind of big and cost as much as the rest of the
computer.. Give the engineers a few more years.

--Bill

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