Mouse Systems Corporation, formerly Rodent Associates, was founded in 1982 by Steve Kirsch, inventor of the optical mouse. In addition to the fact that it was a tool for its invention, the company was also responsible for first bringing the mouse to the IBM PC.
Like all early optical mice, their first product needed a special and reflective mouse pad, on which a square grid of gray and blue lines was printed. As the device moved to size, the feedback of the leds was processed by an on-board microchip, which in turn made the location data readable to the PC and sent via an RS-232 serial port. An external feed was required. Some mice took out their power from the keyboard connector on the motherboard, and had a bypass plug that had to be placed for the keyboard cable.
Early Sun workstations only used MSC optical mice. The first models had large mousepads with a wide grid, later models were smaller and used a closer grid. Although optical mice did not have to be cleaned, they began to behave wrongly after a few years without a clear solution.
In 1984, MSC released PC Paint, the first mouse-driven image editing program for the IBM PC. PC Paint was developed for the company by John Bridges. Millions of copies were delivered, especially bundled with all their mice until the early 90's. PC Paint had limited commercial success as a separate product.
KYE Systems, producer of the brand of "Genius" mice, acquired Mouse Systems in 1990.
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