Your Desktop Cursor is Diagonal for a Reason.

Ever sat there in front of your desktop and just wondered why exactly your mouse cursor is tilted at an angle – and not just a vertical line? Logically – it’d seem fit that a vertical pointer would be more accurate and precise for selecting text, dragging, clicking and the like. However Douglas Engelbart – inventor of the virtual mouse cursor in 1968 – had an extremely good reasoning behind the diagonal graphic for your pointer.

Over 31 years ago when the team at Xerox set out to create the first graphical user interface (GUI) – monitors didn’t look anywhere near as sharp as they do today. Because of this, it was practically impossible to design a mouse cursor that was vertical in stature and easily visible due to the low resolution used on the systems display. Because of this, Engelbart opted to design a pointer that was tilted on a 45-degree angle, in order to drastically improve visibility and accuracy when operating with the systems graphical interface. It’s been over 33 years since the design choice by the team at Xerox – but the 45-degree tilted mouse cursor still stands strong to this day within desktop computing.

Image courtesy of 9to5Mac.

Thanks to 9to5Mac for providing us with this information.