Bill English
Engineer who created the first computer mouse prototype
BILL ENGLISH, who has died aged 91, built the first prototype of the now-ubiquitous computer mouse based on an idea by Doug Engelbart, who is sometimes known as the “father of modern computing”; English went on to develop the ball mouse, which has since been superseded by the optical mouse.
Having experimented with joysticks, light pens and other “pointy devices”, the pair settled on what became known as the “mouse”, although both men denied responsibility for that name.
The prototype (below), built in 1963 but ignored, was a utilitarian affair consisting of a pinewood block with two wheels, a single button (which soon became three buttons) and a cable running out of the bottom – as well as a pair of potentiometers to interpret the positions of the wheels and regulate the on-screen cursor, then called a “cat” or a “bug”.
English recalled the first occasion he used the original mouse. “I got it out of the [work]shop and plugged it in – and it worked,” he said. From the outset it was used for editing text. “The goal was a device that would be able to select characters and words,” he added.
The pair demonstrated the mouse as part of their experimental computer, known as an on-line System (or NLS), in December 1968 at a conference in San Francisco that is widely known today as “the mother of all demos” and included early examples of word processing and hyperlinks.
Engelbart, who died in 2013, was on stage while English, who in his spare time was stage manager for a local drama group, co-ordinated the presentation from the back of the auditorium. He was linked to a computer in Menlo Park 30 miles away, a primitive demonstration of video conferencing.
He recalled the reaction: “Standing ovation … People went up to talk to Doug about it. People came back to talk to us on the platform about, how did you do this.” Although their presentation at the conference had not been authorised by their superiors, the event has come to be seen as a seminal moment in computing.
However, it took Apple to attach the mouse to its Lisa computer in the 1980s for the electronic rodent to become a big cheese. It was then used with Microsoft Windows and has since become the mouse that roars, an integral component of almost every computer. Today there are mutations such as scrolling mice, cordless mice and mice adapted for righthanded, left-handed and even ambidextrous users.
William Kirk English was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on January 27 1929, the son of Harry English, an electrical engineer in the coal mining industry, and his wife Caroline (née Gray). He was sent to Arizona to board at a school based on a ranch.
He studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Kentucky and, after serving with the US Navy, took a Master’s at Stanford University. In 1962 he joined the Stanford Research Institute, where he met Engelbart, director of the institute’s Augmentation Research Center, which was developing the “electronic office”. Both took part in LSD tests sponsored by the US government.
English moved to Xerox PARC in 1971, where he was on the team that invented the ball-based mouse, before working for Sun Microsystems. By the early 2000s he was a consultant to lawyers involved in cases involving mouse-related imitations, most of which he described as silly. “If I’d kept all the patent applications I’ve seen, the stack would be almost a foot high,” he said.
Bill English’s first marriage was dissolved. He is survived by his second wife, Roberta Mercer, and by two sons from his first marriage.