Douglas Engelbart and Bill English invented the first computer mouse at the Stanford Research Institute. The original prototype was a wooden shell with two metal wheels that tracked movement on an X-Y axis. It was nicknamed the 'mouse' because the cord coming out of the back looked like a tail. Engelbart demonstrated the device in 1968 in what is now famously called 'The Mother of All Demos,' which also introduced concepts like hypertext and video conferencing. The mouse was a revolutionary step in 'Human-Computer Interaction,' allowing users to point and click rather than typing complex text commands. It didn't become a household item until the 1980s with the release of the Apple Macintosh, which popularized the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the general public.