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I was wondering who invented the blinking of a cursor, because I was just thinking if it wouldn't blink the UI would be a lot less responsive.. so this must have been one of the first signs of response UI design. Was this IBM? I'm to young to make guesses though.

Or if this question would be impossible to answer, what is the first sign of a blinking cursor in computer history.

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Here's the patent for the blinking cursor patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US3531796

According to that, it was invented by Charles A. Kiesling at Sperry Rand. Patent filed Aug 24, 1967, granted Sep 29, 1970. This isn't iron clad proof that it was first invented at that time, but the time seems about right (computers were getting powerful enough that engineers were starting to care a little bit about user convenience) and Sperry Rand was one of the big players in computing at the time.

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+1 Nice find on the patent. – JohnGB Jan 28 at 3:18
That's interesting, because I remember reading Tim Mott and Larry Tesler talking about making the cursor in Gypsy blink so it wouldn't be mistaken for a capital "I". That doesn't mean they invented it, though :) – daydalis Jan 28 at 11:54
This brochure, from Sperry, mentions blinking text. archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Remington_Rand/…. It was published before 1967. Concurrent with Sperry's work, ARPA work led to the mouse (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart) which (I assume) implies a cursor - perhaps a blinking one. – user1757436 Jan 28 at 13:50
I actually did mean the text cursor the blinking '_' or '|' so my question is answered, therefor I disagree with @kontur which added the mouse tag where the mouse was invented much later at an era where X window system was being invented where much more of UX was laid already. While I was looking for this father of UX with the blinking cursor. This patent proves that it was for UX purposes as the blinking cursor would should 30 frames cursor and 30 frames the selected letter, unintentionally it also made it more aware that the computer is responsive by blinking at the end of line (30f no char) – Dylan Jan 28 at 16:49

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