William Kirk English (January 27, 1929July 26, 2020) was an American

computer engineer Computer engineering (CoE or CpE) is a branch of electrical engineering and computer science that integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and computer software, software. C ...

who contributed to the development of the

computer mouse A computer mouse (plural mice, sometimes mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth ...

while working for Douglas Engelbart at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...

's Augmentation Research Center. He would later work for

Xerox PARC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

and Sun Microsystems.

Early life

English was born on January 27, 1929, in Lexington,

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

. The only son of Harry English and Caroline (Gray) English, he had two half-brothers from his father's previous marriage. Harry English was an electrical engineer who managed coal mines and Caroline was a homemaker. William, or Bill as he was known, attended a boarding school in Arizona and then studied electrical engineering at the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state ...

Career

English served in the US Navy until the late 1950s, including postings in northern California and Japan. He then joined the

Stanford Research Institute SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...

in the 1960s to work on magnets, and built one of the first all-magnetic arithmetic units with

Hewitt Crane Hewitt D. Crane (1927–2008) was an American engineer best known for his pioneering work at SRI International on ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting), for Bank of America, magnetic digital logic, neuristor logic, the development of an ...

. In 1964, he was the first person to join Douglas Engelbart's lab, the Augmentation Research Center. SRI Computer Mouse

He and Douglas Engelbart share credit for creating the first

in 1963; English built the initial prototype, and was its first user, based on Engelbart's notes. English led a 1965 project, sponsored by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

, which evaluated the best way to select a point on a computer display; the mouse was the winner. English was also instrumental at

The Mother of All Demos "The Mother of All Demos" is a name retroactively applied to a landmark computer demonstration, given at the Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ACM/IEEE)—Computer Society's Fall Joint Compu ...

in 1968, which showcased the mouse and other technologies developed as part of their NLS (oN-Line System). In particular, English figured out how to connect a terminal in the

San Francisco Civic Auditorium The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (formerly San Francisco Civic Auditorium) is a multi-purpose arena in San Francisco, California, named after promoter Bill Graham. The arena holds 8,500 people. About the venue The auditorium was designed by re ...

to the host computer at SRI away, and also transmitted audio and video between the locations. He left SRI in 1971 and went to

, where he managed the Office Systems Research Group. While working at PARC, English developed a ball mouse, in which a ball replaced the original set of wheels. It worked similarly to a moveable ball-based mouse device called Rollkugel, which had been developed by

Telefunken Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the ''Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft'' (AEG) ('General electricity company'). The name "Telefunken" ap ...

, Germany, and was offered since 1968 as input device for their computers. In 1989, he went to work for Sun Microsystems on internationalization efforts. English died of respiratory failure in

San Rafael, California San Rafael ( ; Spanish for " St. Raphael", ) is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's populatio ...

, on July 26, 2020, aged 91.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:English, Bill 1929 births 2020 deaths Computer hardware engineers 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers Place of birth missing SRI International people Scientists at PARC (company) People from Lexington, Kentucky Scientists from Kentucky