World's First Haptic Mice (ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT - 1998)

 

As featured on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, the world's first haptic computer mouse began shipping in 1998 for an MSRP of $99. Known as the Wingman Force Feedback Mouse it was quite sophisticated, enabling many sensations from compressing virtual springs and sloshing through virtual liquids, to feeling virtual textures, surfaces and vibrations. Developed by Immersion Corporation and manufactured by Logitech, the mouse enabled the world's first haptic GUI desktop and the first haptic web pages. For example, when you stretched a window - it felt elastic. When you moved an icon, you felt its weight. In 1999 a second product was launched called the iFeel Mouse, also from Immersion and Logitech. It sold for $49 and targeted productivity. The iFeel Mouse also came with drivers that enabled haptics throughout the Windows desktop, adding tactile sensations to icons, menus, buttons, and sliders. It also added haptic feedback to Microsoft Word and Excel. Studies published in 1996 when developing the haptic GUI showed performance could be improved when targeting icons, buttons, etc. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/257089.257327 More research was published in 1998: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/proceedings-abstract/IMECE98/15861/151/1133887