William English (engineer)

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Bill English in 2008

William Kirk English (also Bill English , born January 27, 1929 in Lexington , Kentucky , † July 26, 2020 in San Rafael , California ) was an American computer engineer and co-inventor of the computer mouse .

Life

English was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1929, the son of an electrical engineer. After studying electrical engineering at the University of Kentucky , English served in the US Navy until the late 1950s . He then went to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California , where he worked on new concepts for operating computers, among other things. Here came in 1964 English to Douglas C. Engelbart's angesiedeltem there Augmentation Research Lab . Engelbart and English presented the computer mouse developed there and other techniques to a specialist audience for the first time on December 9, 1968. The consequences of the presentation were so far-reaching for the development of human-machine interaction that Steven Levy referred to the 1994 lecture as The Mother of All Demos . In 1971, English left SRI and went to Xerox , where he worked at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). There he further developed the original concept of the mouse, among other things. From 1989 he worked for Sun Microsystems .

He died in San Rafael, California, aged 91.

Honors

Publications

  • WK English, DC Engelbart, ML Berman: Display-Selection Techniques for Text Manipulation . In: IEEE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics HFE-8 , No. 1, 1967, pp. 5-15.
  • DC Engelbart, WK English: A research center for augmenting human intellect . In: Proceedings of the AFIPS 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference . Thompson Book, San Francisco CA 1968, pp. 395-410.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Co-inventor of the computer mouse: William English died at the age of 91 on www.heise.de, accessed on August 1, 2020.
  2. ↑ Abdul Montaqim: Pioneers of the Computer Age: from Charles Babbage to Steve Jobs . Monsoon Media, p. 13.
personal data
SURNAME English, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES English, William Kirk (full name); English, Bill
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer engineer and co-inventor of the computer mouse
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Lexington , Kentucky
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 2020
Place of death San Rafael , California