oldmouse blog minis; trackballs
1960s: Engelbart's first mouse; Telefunken "Rollkugel"
1966: Orbit X-Y Ball Tracker
1968: Engelbart's NLS mouse
1970s: Mystery wheel mouse; Hawley Mouse House
1973: Alto I [2]
1981: Xerox 8010 Star [2]
1982: Logitech; VisiOn GUI; Mouse Systems; KoalaPad
1983: Hawley Mark II X063X; Lisa; Microsoft bus mouse
1984: Macintosh; Microsoft serial mouse
1985: NeXT Computer
1986: Hawley DEC mouse; GEOS; Atari ST mouse; Commodore 1350 Mouse
1987: IBM PS/2; Microsoft 'dove bar' mouse
1996: USB (Universal Serial Bus)
1997: Microsoft PC 97 standard

oldmouse.com

Hawley Mark II X063X "Jellybeans" Mouse

Thanks to Tom Markham for contributing these wonderful photos of this Hawley Mark II X063X mouse from Massachusetts.

Because of its colorful buttons, this mouse is hereby dubbed the "jellybean" Hawley. These buttons seem more playful than the other business-like Hawleys, more in tune with the colorful X063X insides. The colors evoke the creative Hawley ad picturing stacks of multicolored blocks that look like the Hawley mouse. "At last, THE MOUSE is here! The HAWLEY X063X(tm) Mouse is now produced in large volume for original equipment manufacturers and end-users in colors to match your hardware." (Stanford Making the Macintosh) Of course, contemporary equipment was all probably black and "computer greige."

But the tri-colored buttons probably relate to software commands. They harken to the Alto mouse buttons which were called in software lingo red, yellow and blue even though they were black. [Byte 1981] Early documentation referenced "doing a 'Red Click,' 'Blue Click', etc." [Ron Cude, private correspondance] Here Jack Hawley produced actual red, yellow, and blue buttons on this Mark II mouse. The pale blue seems out of sync with the pure yed and yellow, however.

Bottom metal plate of the 'jellybeans' X063X mouse with serial number 10154
The insulation on this Hawley mouse's cord with serial number 10154 remains intact.
Photo ©Tom Markham 2005

Although the X063X bears a DB9 pin plug, it certainly would not run on a PC, even with a gender changing adapter. If it were possible, it would require some devilishly clever software, programming that Rich Pasco could no doubt pull off.

More X063X Mouses

Three X063Xes are distinctively colored, each has a tale:: white with black buttons - serial no. 07305; black with white buttons & label - ser. no. 07350; black with tri-colored buttons - serial no. 10154; Hawley intro