Why is the mouse cursor arrow facing diagonally 45 degrees?

You may have never wondered ...

Why is the mouse cursor arrow leaned diagonally 45 degrees instead of upward?Isn't there a few people who have questioned the cursor angle in the first place?It seems that there is no particular reason for this design, but it seems that there was a reasonable reason in the era when the pixels were rough.

この質問に対しQ&Aサイト｢Stack Exchange｣では、ソフトウェア開発者のバート・ジッセンズ（Bart Gijssens）さんが、なぜカーソルが傾くようになったのか、その成り立ちを解説していました。

Historically, it looks like this.

The mouse and mouse cursor were invented by Douglas EnglishBart.The cursor arrow originally turned straight up.

However, when Alto was developed at PARC (Zerox Palo Alto Institute), the direction of the cursor arrow changed to 45 degrees.At that time, on the screen with a small number of pixels, it was discovered that it was easier to recognize than the cursor with a upward arrow, and it was easy to draw diagonally 45 degrees arrows.

As you can see from the image below, it seems that it was difficult to distinguish the upward cursor that was originally devised.

Gissens has added to the answer that Engelbert's invented cursor to the left, Steve Jobs has adopted LiSA development and will incorporate Bill Gates following Jobs.In today's world, I am too familiar with (and practical) cursor (and practical) of 45 degrees, so I can't think of it if it was another form.In the first place, there is no need to change perfect things already.

The shape of the cursor is extremely trivial, but if the cursor of the upright arrow before the ALTO development was left, it might have been frustrating every time you operate.Thank you for the invention of the predecessor.

[Stack Exchange Via Digg]

Ashley Feinberg (US version / Temori)