History of Computers, Computer

Graphics and Virtual Reality

 Brief History of Computers

Abacus, adding machine with gears (Pascal-17th c),

Leibniz (early 18th c), Jacquard (loom, early 19th c)
Babbages Difference Engine and Analytical Engine
(programmable- 19th c), Ada Lovelace
Booles system of logic (1854)
Hollerith (1890 census punchcards in 1928-IBM)
Turing On Computable Numbers (1937)
World War II Colossus all electronic- vacuum tubes
Aikens Mark I (1944 mechanical relays)
Atanasoff-Berry vacuum tubes (early 1940s)
Mauchly-Eckert ENIAC
Von Neumann stored program (late 1945)
Hopper first computer bug
 Brief History of computers (cont)
IBM 650 first mass produced computer 500K RAM (1953)
Texas Instruments- silicon transistors (1954)
McCarthy and Minsky AI (1956)
DEC PDP- first minicomputer - monitor and screen (1960)
First video game (1962)
ARPANET (adv res proj agency 1962)
Engelbarts mouse (1964)
Integrated circuits (chips) in computers - Burroughs(1968)-
invented in 1958
Brooks: kinesthetic interaction between protein molecules
(1967)
Bell Labs: UNIX (1970)
Floppy disks (1970)
Intel 4004- computer on a chip (1971)
 Brief History of computers (cont)
First PC Altair in a kit (1975)
Jobs and Wozniak- Apple I Apple Computer (1976,
1977)
Gates and Allen Microsoft (1977)
IBM PC (1981)
SGI (1981)
Macintosh computer (1984)
Boom HMD (1987)
Spatialization of sound at NASA- Fisher and Wenzel
(1989)
Polhemus position trackers (1988)
Berners-Lee at CERN World Wide Web (1989)
Linux (1991)
Python (1991)
 Brief History of computers (cont)
Graphical user interface for Web navigation (Mosaic)
(1993)
Netscape (1994)
Yahoo founded (1994)
Java, Internet Explorer (1995)
Google founded (1998)
iMac (1998)
i-pod (2001)
Processing computer language (2001)
Gmail (2004)
Facebook (2004)
YouTube (2005)
i-phone (2007)
ipad (2010)
Kinect (2010)
 History of Computer Graphics,
Animation and Virtual Reality
McCays Gertie the Dinosaur (1914 cartoon with
10,000 drawings)
Disney founded (1923)
Steamboat Willie: sound animated film (1930)
Heligs Sensorama (1956)
Boeing uses term computer graphics (1960)
Head mounted displays (1960, 1961)
First video game (Spacewars 1961)
Sutherlands Sketchpad (1963 - MIT doctoral thesis
computer graphics on a monitor- light pen- vision; later
The Ultimate Display, HMD ideas)
Macintosh with graphical user interface (GUI) (1984)
Graphics and VR History (cont)
Furness display system for pilots (1966)
SIGGRAPH formed (1969)
Gourauds work on shading (1971)
Pong, interactive graphics game (Atari) (1972)
Phongs work on illumination (1973)
HMD research by Clark (future founder of SGI)
(1974)
Sandin and Sayre bend-sensing glove (1977)
Polhemus tracking system (1979)
Furness virtual cockpit (1981)
SGI founded, Sun founded (1981)
 Graphics and VR History (cont)
Zimmerman: data glove (1982)
ILM (industrial Light Magic) develops computer graphics
images for genesis effect sequence in Star Trek II: The
Wrath of Khan (1982)
Sonification (sound that represents data) (1982)
Callahans see-through HMD (1983)
Jaron Lanier: VPL Research- dataglove- coined term VR
(1984)
Young Sherlock Homes movie (1985- first computer
animated character)
Beginnings of motion capture (1985)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit mixes actors and computer
generated (1985)
Gif and jpeg (1986)
 Graphics and VR History (cont)
Microsoft adds GUI to Windows (1990)
Tactile feedback glove, Sense8 founded, first VR
systems (1990)
CAVE at SIGGRAPH (1992)
VR symposium (1993)
Pixar and Disney release Toy Story, first full-length
computer animation (1994)
mp3 (1993)
Doom released (1993)
VR Society formed (1994)
Gall bladder removed with aid of HMD (1994)
Graphics cards become popular
Motion capture
Kinect gesture capture