Career
He would later work for Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and Sun Microsystems. English joined Socially Responsible Investment in the 1960s to work on magnetic drives, 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 cr for creating possibly the earliest computer mouse in 1963.
English built the initial prototype, and was its first user, based on Engelbart"s notes. 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-Lincolnshire System).
In particular, English figured out how to connect a terminal in the San Francisco Civic Auditorium to the host computer at Socially Responsible Investment, and also transmitted audio and video between the locations. He left Socially Responsible Investment in 1971 and went to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where he managed the Office Systems Research Group.
While working at Palo Alto Research Center, English developed a ball mouse, in which a ball replaced the original set of wheels.
lieutenant worked similar to a moveable ball-based mouse device called Rollkugel, which had been developed by Telefunken, Germany, and was offered since 1968 as input device for their computers. In 1989 he went to work for Sun Microsystems on internationalization efforts.