Bill English, RIP
BBC:
The co-creator of the computer mouse, William English, has died aged 91.
[…]
His first version was a wooden block with a single button - and underneath, two rolling wheels at 90-degree angles that would record vertical and sideways movement.
[…]
He left the Stanford Research Institute in 1971, moving to Xerox’s famous Parc research centre.
There, he replaced the wheels on his first mouse design with a rolling ball - the design that became familiar to most end users over the next decades.
Via Josh Centers:
While Englebart came up with the idea for the mouse, it was English who built it out of wood, electrical switches, and metal wheels in 1963. Neither man became wealthy from their inventions, which were ignored for decades. However, in our opinion, they deserve places in history alongside Edison, Tesla, and Turing, because they defined the direction of human-computer interaction that continues through today.
