Mouse

Mouse audio micro-course (transcript)

Three short podcasts about “Mouse”. Listen with the interactive player.

Podcast 1 — Introduction & meaning

Narrator: Mouse. A noun and verb. Pronounced /maʊs/.

Narrator: Mouse comes from Old English mūs — the rodent — from Proto-Germanic mūs, from Proto-Indo-European mū́s, meaning mouse or rat. Cognate with German Maus, Dutch muis, Latin mus, and Greek mys. One of the oldest and most stable words in the Indo-European family — the mouse being one of the animals whose name was established before the languages diverged.

Narrator: The computer mouse takes its name from Douglas Engelbart's invention demonstrated at what became known as the Mother of All Demos in San Francisco in December 1968 — a landmark ninety-minute presentation that demonstrated not only the mouse but also hypertext, video conferencing, word processing, and collaborative real-time editing, decades before these became ordinary. The device being called a mouse for its shape and the cable that resembled a tail. The demonstration being remarkably prescient — Engelbart showing, in 1968, essentially the future of personal computing.

Narrator: The plural of mouse is mice — an irregular plural formed by a vowel change (i-mutation or umlaut) rather than by adding -s. Old English had mūs/mȳs (mouse/mice), where the vowel in the plural was fronted due to an earlier -iz suffix that subsequently disappeared. The same i-mutation process producing other irregular plurals: louse/lice, goose/geese, foot/feet, tooth/teeth, man/men. The pattern being one of the most ancient in English grammar.

Narrator: The domestic house mouse — Mus musculus — has lived in close association with humans since the beginning of agriculture, approximately 10,000 years ago. Arriving in Britain with the Neolithic agricultural revolution. The mouse being simultaneously a pest (eating stored grain, contaminating food) and a laboratory research animal of enormous scientific importance — the laboratory mouse being one of the most extensively studied organisms in biomedical research, its genome sequenced, its genetics extensively mapped, thousands of inbred strains developed for research.

Narrator: Mouse. The ancient PIE rodent — from the Neolithic granary to Engelbart's 1968 cable-tailed cursor device — wherever the small and swift make their surprising contributions.

Speaker A: Douglas Engelbart's Mother of All Demos being one of those historical moments that deserves more recognition than it typically gets.

Speaker B: Engelbart presenting on 9 December 1968 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco — a 90-minute demonstration that showed a working system including the mouse, the graphical user interface, hypertext linking (clicking a link to jump to another document), video conferencing, collaborative real-time text editing, and window management. All of this in 1968, when most computers were room-sized machines operated by punched cards. The demonstration being named the Mother of All Demos in retrospect — the name being a play on Saddam Hussein's 1991 use of the phrase mother of all battles. Engelbart receiving little commercial recognition or financial reward for his inventions during his lifetime, despite their foundational importance.

Speaker A: The irregular plural mice being one of those grammatical fossils worth understanding.

Speaker B: The mice plural being an example of i-mutation or Germanic umlaut — a sound change that affected Proto-Germanic and Old English whereby a back vowel in one syllable was fronted by the presence of an -i or -j in the following syllable. The earlier form being something like *mūsiz (mouse with plural suffix -iz), where the -iz caused the ū to front to ȳ (approximately the sound in French lune), which later unrounded to ī. The -iz then disappeared, leaving only the changed vowel as the marker of plurality. The same process producing louse/lice, goose/geese, foot/feet, tooth/teeth, man/men, and woman/women (with additional changes). The pattern being one of the most ancient in the language, preserved in a handful of irregular forms while the regular -s plural took over for new words.

Speaker A: The laboratory mouse being one of those scientific tools whose importance to biomedical research is extraordinary.

Speaker B: The laboratory mouse — primarily Mus musculus — being one of the most extensively used organisms in biomedical research. Sharing approximately 85% of protein-coding genes with humans. Easy to breed rapidly (gestation 20 days, litter size 6-8, sexually mature at 6 weeks), small, inexpensive to maintain. Thousands of inbred strains being developed for specific research purposes — the nude mouse (lacking a thymus, used for cancer research), the ob/ob mouse (obese due to leptin deficiency, used for obesity research), the SCID mouse (severe combined immunodeficiency, used for transplantation and cancer research). The human genome project being preceded by the mouse genome project. The CRISPR gene editing revolution dramatically accelerating the creation of mouse models of human disease.

Speaker A: The transition from computer mouse to touchscreen being one of those technology shifts worth noting.

Speaker B: The mouse being the dominant pointing device from the 1984 Apple Macintosh until the rise of smartphones and tablets from around 2007. The iPhone's multi-touch interface eliminating the need for a pointing device on mobile — the finger replacing the mouse. Trackpads on laptops becoming more sophisticated and eventually multi-touch capable. The mouse remaining dominant on desktop computers but becoming less central to computing generally as mobile computing expanded. The mouse being a perfect example of a technology that seemed universal and permanent but was actually tied to a particular form factor — the desktop computer — and could be superseded when the form factor changed.

Speaker B: Build a Next.js Douglas Engelbart's Mother of All Demos and its influence on personal computing for a technology teacher — documenting Engelbart's 1968 demonstration, reviewing Engelbart, mouse, and computing history, generating a mouse computing framework, and producing a mouse technology history guide.

Speaker A: Engelbart's Mother of All Demos documented with technology education analysis so teachers explain both the demonstration — how Engelbart showed a complete working system on 9 December 1968 including the mouse, graphical user interface, hypertext, video conferencing, collaborative text editing, and window management, all decades before these became commercial products — and the context: why Engelbart's work was not commercialised during his lifetime despite its foundational importance, how Xerox PARC subsequently developed GUI concepts into the Alto computer (1973), how Apple licensed the GUI concept from Xerox for the Lisa (1983) and Macintosh (1984), what the history reveals about the gap between invention and commercialisation in technology, and why the 1968 demo was only named the Mother of All Demos retrospectively.

Speaker B: Design a Django i-mutation (umlaut) in Old English and how it created irregular plurals like mice for a linguistics teacher — documenting i-mutation and irregular plurals, reviewing umlaut, mouse, and Old English, generating a mouse umlaut framework, and producing a mouse historical linguistics guide.

Speaker A: I-mutation documented with linguistics education analysis so teachers explain both the mechanism — how Proto-Germanic plural suffixes containing -i or -j caused the preceding vowel to be fronted (ū → ȳ for mouse/mice, ō → ē for foot/feet, ā → ē for man/men), how the suffix then disappeared leaving only the vowel change as the plural marker — and the surviving examples: how mouse/mice, louse/lice, goose/geese, foot/feet, tooth/teeth, man/men, woman/women all preserve this ancient Germanic pattern, how the regular -s plural replaced i-mutation for new words entering the language (mouses as a technical plural for computer mice being sometimes used, reflecting the -s pattern taking over for the new meaning), and what the survival of these irregular forms reveals about how high-frequency vocabulary resists regularisation.

Speaker B: Create a Svelte the laboratory mouse and its role in biomedical research for a biology teacher — documenting laboratory mouse research, reviewing Mus musculus, research mouse, and biology, generating a mouse laboratory framework, and producing a mouse biology guide.

Speaker A: Laboratory mouse documented with biology education analysis so teachers explain both the animal — how Mus musculus shares approximately 85% of protein-coding genes with humans, breeds rapidly (20-day gestation, 6-8 pups per litter, sexually mature at 6 weeks), and is inexpensive to maintain — and the research applications: how thousands of inbred strains have been developed (nude mouse for cancer research, ob/ob for obesity/leptin research, SCID for immunology, APP/PS1 for Alzheimer's), how the mouse genome was sequenced (2002) enabling comparative genomics, how CRISPR gene editing accelerated creation of mouse disease models, and what the 3Rs (Replace, Reduce, Refine) framework for animal research ethics requires researchers to consider about mouse use.

Speaker B: Build a Vue the house mouse's coevolution with human agriculture and its dual role as pest and research animal for a biology teacher — documenting Mus musculus and human coevolution, reviewing house mouse, agriculture, and biology, generating a mouse coevolution framework, and producing a mouse ecology guide.

Speaker A: House mouse coevolution documented with biology education analysis so teachers explain both the commensal relationship — how Mus musculus has lived alongside humans since the beginning of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, arriving in Britain with Neolithic farming, exploiting stored grain and human shelter — and the dual role: how the mouse is simultaneously a pest (grain contamination, electrical damage from chewing, disease transmission including hantavirus) and an extraordinarily valuable research animal, how mouse populations have adapted to human environments (human commensals showing different behaviour, physiology, and genetics from wild populations), and what the house mouse's global distribution (following human trade routes to every inhabited continent) reveals about how rodents exploit human-made environments.

Speaker B: Develop a React Native the Proto-Indo-European *mūs root and its cognates across European languages for a linguistics teacher — documenting the PIE mouse root and cognates, reviewing PIE, mouse, and etymology, generating a mouse PIE framework, and producing a mouse comparative linguistics guide.

Speaker A: PIE mūs documented with linguistics education analysis so teachers explain both the root — how Proto-Indo-European mū́s (mouse, rat) gives Old English mūs (mouse), German Maus, Dutch muis, Latin mus (giving museum via Muse — the Helicon mouse shrine — and muscat: the grape that attracts mice), Greek mys (also meaning muscle: the muscle moving under skin looks like a mouse) — and the stability: how the mouse is one of the few animals whose name was established before the Indo-European language family diverged (approximately 5,000-7,000 years ago), how the Greek mys giving both mouse and muscle (musculus: little mouse) produced English muscle and mussel (the muscle-shaped shellfish), showing how one ancient PIE animal name branched into anatomy, food, and computing across the millennia.