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While the most common pointing device by far is the mouse, many more devices have been developed. However, the term mouse is commonly used as a metaphor for devices that move a computer cursor. Fitts's law can be used to predict the speed with which users can use a pointing device.
Workshop of the Strasbourg cathedral A computer controlled router carving a sculpture from a block of marble 15th Century measuring device with plumb-bobs. A pointing machine is a measuring tool used by stone sculptors and woodcarvers to accurately copy plaster, clay or wax sculpture models into wood or stone. In essence the device is a ...
The device had rotary dials that rotated in accordance with the selected numbers; with gears, drums, and clever engineering, it was capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (using 9's constant). A stylus was used to turn the dials. Later devices of this type include the Arithmometer, in the 1860s; and the Addiator, in 1920. [5]
The devices, which began to appear in the mid-19th century and peaked in popularity in the 1890s, cannot be conclusively attributed to a single person, although Hugh Blackburn, a professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow, is commonly believed to be the official inventor.
A light pen is a computer input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a computer's cathode-ray tube (CRT) display. It allows the user to point to displayed objects or draw on the screen in a similar way to a touchscreen but with greater positional accuracy.
A camera lucida is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists and microscopists. It projects an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed onto the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist sees both scene and drawing surface simultaneously, as in a photographic double exposure.
The most rigorous definition of this abstract tool is the "collapsing compass"; having drawn a circle from a given point with a given radius, it disappears; it cannot simply be moved to another point and used to draw another circle of equal radius (unlike a real pair of compasses).
Point and click are one of the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (pointing) and then pressing a button on a mouse or other pointing device (click). An example of point and click is in hypermedia , where users click on hyperlinks to navigate from document to document.