William English, an American computer engineer, inventor in 26, passed away on July 91 at the age of 1968 first computer mouse, based on the project of his colleague Douglas Engelbart. The news was released only in the past hour by the second wife, Roberta Mercer. For the uninitiated, the original mouse made by Bill English in the mid-60s was simply a block of pine wood, a raw button and a connector. In addition, the "device" contained two potentiometers (capable of tracking movements) and two wheels for movement.
The first mouse invented by Douglas Engelbert in 1964 consisted of a hard wooden shell and two clunky metal wheels. pic.twitter.com/zTF0TH8PNu
- Silver Lining (@silverliningUK) March 18, 2016
William Kirk English served in the United States Navy until the late 50s, then joined the Stanford Research Institute in the 60s to work on magnets and build one of the first all-magnetic arithmetic units with Hewitt Crane. In addition to having worked at theAugmentation Research Center (ARC) of SRI International under Engelbart, and responsible for developing new innovative ways in which people could interact with computers and technology, the US computer engineer worked for the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he would develop a ball mouse and machine that would affect Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh peripherals in the future.
