Xref: utzoo comp.sys.next:853 sci.electronics:4354 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!mailrus!cwjcc!neoucom!wtm 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 return mail path: ...!lll-winken!scooter!neoucom!impulse!wtm