Friday 11 May 2012

History of computer graphics


We looked at the development of Computer graphics and how they have been used in animation.  The first computer to create computer graphics was the Whirlwind. The Whirlwind was originally designed to track enemy movements during the war, they had radar that would send signals to the computer that would produce real time images. The Whirlwind computer was developed in 1951 and was the first computer to use RAM( random access memory).
here is an image of the computer Whirlwind and some workers operating the machine 




The Next thing we looked at was the Sketchpad which was developed in 1963 by Ivan Sutherland. The Sketchpad is a computer program that allowed the user to draw on a computer using a light pen.

image of the light pen and sketchpad being used
 
We also looked at the first game Space Wars that was created by Steve Russell a student from MIT that Ivan Sutherland also part of.
Here is video about the first video game Space Wars