English served in the US Navy until the late 1950s, including postings in northern California and Japan. He then joined the
Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s to work on magnets, and built one of the first all-magnetic arithmetic units with
Hewitt Crane. In 1964, he was the first person to join Douglas Engelbart's lab, the
Augmentation Research Center. He and Douglas Engelbart share credit for creating the first
computer mouse 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, 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 in 1968, which showcased the mouse and other technologies developed as part of their
NLS (oN-Line System). He left SRI in 1971 and went to
Xerox PARC, 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. In 1989, he went to work for
Sun Microsystems on internationalization efforts. English died of respiratory failure in
San Rafael, California, on July 26, 2020, aged 91. ==References==