HCI Museum
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1980 Xerox Corporation

Xerox Cat

A circular capacitive touchpad — arguably the first shipped on a computer — in the Xerox 860 keyboard

InputPointingCapacitiveTouchpadWord Processing
Xerox Cat archival photograph

Overview

Deep dive

Media

Xerox 860 keyboard with CAT PAD
Xerox 860 keyboard drawing showing the CAT PAD (key #27), from Williford, Word Processing on the Xerox 860 (Wiley, 1984), p. 15. Manual scan.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia — Touchpad (history section citing Williford 1984, Flores 1983)
  2. Williford, J. M., Word Processing on the Xerox 860 (Wiley, 1984)
  3. Flores, Ivan, Word Processing Handbook (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983)