William, or Bill as he was known, attended a boarding school in Arizona and then studied electrical engineering at the University of Kentucky.[3] 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.[5][6] 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.[4][7] 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).[4][8] In particular, English figured out how to connect a terminal in the San Francisco Civic Auditorium to the host computer at SRI 30 miles (48 km) away, and also transmitted audio and video between the locations.