Read on Twitter
"Hold on, let me call you via my mouse"
“*Opens a new field of computer life, saves space ,saves times,makes your life more comfortable and more convenient”
If anyone is wondering how I found this product: On eBay, do a search for “NOS”—it’s shorthand for “new old stock,” which generally refers to products that were made decades ago but never used. Often these kinds of products are of dubious quality or usefulness.
Here’s another example of a new old stock product on eBay:
Coca-Mousea-Phonea Classic
SquareTrade in places where SquareTrade doesn’t need to be
The Telemouse, a device of arguably limited value even in its prime, dates to the late 1990s/early 2000s. To give you an idea, here’s an ad for it in a Value City circular dating to 2000: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/62249885/telemouse-ad-circa-2000/
Curtis was not a fly-by-night company; it was the manufacturer of many accessories for computers in the '90s. Here’s an ad for them that ran in PC Magazine in 1991. I wonder how the printer feet held up. http://books.google.com/books?id=WwMCsPuGSLEC&pg=PT112
I need to confirm that it was the *same* Curtis, but given that this Curtis also focused on unusual accessories, I think the odds are good they’re one and the same.
Now the reason why a device like the Telemouse might have actually seemed to make sense ties to its compatibility claims: At the time, computer modems were fully going mainstream because of lower prices.
The reason prices were declining was because of a decision in the late 1990s by manufacturers to build “soft modems,” which basically had the software of the era, usually Windows, handle the logic of the calls. https://tedium.co/2017/03/20/dial-up-soft-modem-history/
These modems suck compared to hardware modems, in part because they run into the same problems as integrated graphics do: They use some of your computer’s resources to manage phone calls.
A 486 or Celeron in the 1990s didn’t have a lot of resources to share, but hey, it saved money, so let’s integrate it!
Fortunately it was a problem that technology solved—just a few years later, cable modems, Wi-Fi and DSL began to appear, putting the data management needs back into the court of dedicated hardware.
But the result was that (I imagine) manufacturers saw an opportunity to save desk space by integrating a phone with a mouse, because both could plug into the back of a tower.
If this Curtis is the same Curtis that developed computer accessories, they are also responsible for developing some of the earliest Nintendo video game accessories, per Google Patents. Here are some of their patent filings:
And that’s just one brand. As Sean says, there are many others. https://twitter.com/seanmalseed/status/1322586498231926784
This one has a design that 1) looks like a mouse, 2) integrates a scroll wheel and 3) features a mouse on the box.
And that’s to say nothing of mouse pads with integrated speakerphones and calculators.
So the Curtis that made the telephone mouse is NOT the same Curtis that made the printer feet. I figured this out because I did a search for the address at the bottom of the box on the eBay listing.
It’s a Canadian company—as obvious by the dual languages and Ontario address.
It’s a Canadian company—as obvious by the dual languages and Ontario address.
And if you go to their website—still active, unlike the other Curtis—you see this logo. Same one as on the Tele-Mouse! https://www.curtisint.com
Curtis, today, is a company that manufactures consumer electronics under the RCA and Sylvania name. No clue why they made this mouse yet, but it seems like they work as a distributor for technology companies.
. @curtisintltd is on Twitter, but has never tweeted. I hope someone there sees this and can offer light on why this mouse/telephone combo was manufactured.
