'Course, if you're just recording off your RCA plugs you could have bought just any old turntable, I suppose or use the one you've got lying around in the basement.... 'Course, if you're just recording off your RCA plugs you could have bought just any old turntable, I suppose or use the one you've got lying around in the basement....

But though the patent was filed in 1967, the first-ever computer mouse was never shown to the public until December 9, 1968 -- forty years ago this Tuesday -- at what later became known as the "The Mother Of All Demos" at the convention centre in San Francisco. It was called the Mother of All Demos because Engelbart not only showed off the mouse for the first time but he also demonstrated concepts which we now can't live without including: video conferencing, e-mail, and hypertext -- text on a screen that, when clicked or acted upon by the user, leads to another screen of information or to some action by the computer.