Rise of Digital media miterm

1963 Paramount decision

declared the movie business was a monopoly that should be broken up. That decision, plus the competition from television, caused many independent movie studios to decline and by the 1960s be bought up by larger companies.

Oskar Fischinger

German abstract-expressionist artist and filmmaker who fled Hitler in the 1930s and settled in Hollywood. His work inspired a generation of experimental filmmakers who later moved into computers.

John Whitney and James Whitney

began creating experimental abstract films in the 1940s.  Whitney bought WWII army surplus gunsights and other technology and rewired them to be a simple anaolog computer to create images. Whitney’s work on the opening titles of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Vertigo is considered the earliest computer graphics in a major motion picture

John Whitney

Father of Computer Graphics

Ben Laposky

bought old oscilloscopes and tried to create art with bending the light waves , freeze-framing the image and photographing the screen.

Oscillons

Making images by oscilloscope light wave technology proved to be too limited, and was eventually abandoned by 1956 by the system of small lights called Pixels

Mary Ellen Bute, Hy Hirsh,  Jordan Belson, Norman McClaren of the National Film Board of Canada, Stan Vanderbeek

experimental non-objective abstract films, and then later were brought into using computers

Vanderbeek and Lillian Schwartz

hired by Bell Labs to utilize computers to expand their image and sound making possibilities.

Peter Foldes

created the film Hunger, one of the first narrative films. It was the first CG film nominated for an Academy Award.

Larry Cuba

hired by George Lucas to create computer imagery for the first Star Wars film, A New Hope

Blue Sky Research

scientific research that may not seem to have immediate practical purpose, but create benefits long term

Vanaevar Bush

convinced President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 to set up a tripartite system of linking academic centers like MIT with private businesses like the RAND Corp and Honeywell to use federal funds to create technology that could be used by the army.

Project Whirlwind

After the Nanuvik false-alarm Incident of April 1952, at the request of the Air Force an adapted radar screen was added to the Tixo to become the first computer screens

sputnik

the first satellite into orbit

ARPA

focus on defense technology, renamed DARPA

Project SAGE

SAGE used an early light pen stylus, the first modems going over telephone lines, coing the term on-line

Ivan Sutherland

wrote Sketchpad, the first software for computer animation

Internet

began as a response to the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), to decentralize communications into a web based system, so one nuclear bomb strike on a major city would not cause complete paralysis of the nation.

aircraft flight simulators

Advancement in graphic algorhithyms were necessary for images to move in real time with a pilots steering controls

Flight Simulator

1980 Microsoft released their industrial aircraft flight simlulator program

William Fetter

coined the term Computer Graphics

Mansfield Amendment

ordering big cutbacks in defense spending. This caused many scientists working on CGI to move into the private sector.

Fred Terman

became dean of engineering at Stanford University, father of silicon valley

The Stanford Research Institute

one program under Douglas Engelbardt, the inventor of the computer mouse

Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab

under John McCarthy. They sought to increase the ability of computers to think for themselves independently.

The Mother of All Demos

Engelbart demonstrated the first work station

Brown University,

graphic arts program run by Andries van Dam

Cornell University

established Computer Science Dept. in 1965

Ohio State University, Charles Csuri

created the film Hummingbird, the first attempt to digitally represent an organic animal

Chris Wedge

Tuber’s Two Step

IBM

the first big computer producing giantThe Bell System

The Bell System

Bell Labs employed a number of experimental filmmakers to explore the boundaries of digital sight and sound.  Mary Ellen Bute, Lillian Schwartz and Stan Vanderbeek.

BEFLIX

one of the earliest commercially available computer graphics programs

Seymour Cray

designed the Cray Supercomputers

LISP

advanced computer languag

Evans & Sutherland

focused on creating modular compenents of mainframes to generate computer graphics

Xerox Parc

drew top designers and scientists recently laid off from government work, and put them to designing the office of the future.

TMRC (Tech Model Railroad Club)

transitioned from love of model trains to interest in computers.

The Whole Earth Catalog

first suggested the concept of home computers be used for non-military purposes.  

ACM SIGGRAPH

The first national association of computer graphics enthusiasts.

SpaceWar!

the first retailed computer game

Ralph Baer

created the first retailed video game, the Odyssey

Nolan Bushnell

started Atari in Sunnyvale California. created Pong

Nintendo

began in 1889 making playing cards. Transitioned into electronics in 1956. 

Shigeru Miyamoto

designed Donkey Kong

First Great VideoGame Crash

Market oversaturated with cheap knock-off games.

Tetris

Alexi Pajitnov

Dungeons and Dragons

Mulitple-player, networking games arose out of early fans of 1970s

Lara Croft

Tomb Raider

Dr. Alexander Schure

created the New York Insitute of Technology

Ed Catmull, Rebecca Allen, ALvy Ray Smith, Jim Clarke, Jim Blinn

Dr. Schure flew around the country getting the best equipment from Evans & Sutherland, and the best young talent.

The Works

caused a sensation at Siggraph.