Dunno what made me think of this just now. When I worked for IT in a school district way back in the 90s, a librarian told me she kept a supply of mouse balls in her desk because kids would steal them out of the school computers. What I remember about those balls was they picked up dust and crud off surfaces. Pretty soon optical mice came along and they were history.
Reminds me, I used to have compiler errors make the 3 Stooges “bonk-OWW!” sound. Not as a student, as a software dev in my 40s.