Les mots et les choses

Nochmal die "Maus": der Erfinder, Douglas Engelbart, sagt während der Demonstration 1968, dass er sich dafür entschuldigen müsse, dass er selber nicht wirklich weiß, warum das Ding so heißt. Ich habe aber auch ein Interview mit ihm gesehen, worin er sagt, dass der Name ca. 1963 entstanden ist, weil der Kabel wie ein Mäuseschwanz und der Knopf wie ein Öhrchen aussah. Finde ich plausibel genug...



Zum "Joystick" (Freude-Stock): da ist ein bisschen mehr Debatte und Unklarheit drum. Hier ist ein Artikel aus der New York Times (von 2005), worin steht:

"At the recent E3 Gaming Expo in Los Angeles, where video game juggernauts Microsoft (maker of the Xbox), Sony (PlayStation) and Nintendo (GameCube) offered glimpses of their next-generation consoles, no mention was made of Robert Esnault-Pelterie.

Yet millions of gaming enthusiasts (and crane operators and cellphone owners and even the captain of the world's largest, longest, tallest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2) owe the early-20th-century French aviator a debt of gratitude for his invention: the joystick. It was first used for aircraft controls, but much else about its origins - both mechanical and etymological - are matters of debate. The first citation of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from the diary of the British actor and aviator Robert Loraine. In 1910, he made this entry: "In order that he not blunder inadvertently into the air, the central lever - otherwise the cloche, or joy-stick is tied well forward."

While some researchers have assumed an X-rated origin, Michael Quinion, a sleuth of international English and editor of the Web site worldwidewords.org, suggests that a G-rated definition is more likely: "The exhilaration felt by an early pilot's journey into the air," is how he describes it. As for the device itself, some argue that the credit should go not to Mr. Esnault-Pelterie, but to a Missouri pilot and inventor, James Henry Joyce - thus, "Joyce stick."

But a number of historians, including Edward Tenner, a senior research associate at the National History Museum's Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, side with Mr. Esnault-Pelterie."

Cool finde ich vor allem dies: "Wherever the idea came from, the translation of human will into machine movement via a single stick may be one of the most overlooked achievements of the last 100 years."