17 Nov 2017, 09:23
I went backwards.
Started out with a Quest Mouse¹ from Watford Electronics, three buttons, on my BBC Micro.
Then I switched to a PC, and that came with a Microsoft-compatible mouse with two buttons².
Finally I switched to Mac, and that reduced the count of buttons one last time, to a single button!
So not only was there no wheel scrolling, but nobody valued having convenient access to lots of buttons either, not because they'd not thought of them, but because they rejected the idea!
¹ At least one of the microswitches on mine wore out, and I ended up being given one in better condition; I wish I'd kept the defective one so that I could open it up and document it.
² Mice designed to use the Microsoft mouse driver for DOS used two buttons; mice designed to use the Logitech mouse driver for DOS used three buttons — I did have one program (a text editor) that only worked with Logitech mice, so for me that one was keyboard-only