Spoems - John Whitney - Arabesque (1975) early computer graphics

John Whitney - Arabesque (1975) early computer graphics

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John Whitney is considered by many to be the "Father of Computer Graphics". He started in the 1940s building clockwork mechanisms with lights to draw directly on film. Later, he bought WW2 surplus analog ballistics computers and eventually started using digital computers. I believe this one was rendered using a vector display. Incidentally, his son John Whitney, Jr. owned the company that did graphics for "The Last Starfighter".

Channel: Film & Animation
Uploaded: April 9, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Author: postingoldtapes

Length: 0:06:43
Rating: 4.85
Views: 35,683

Tags: john whitney computer graphics arabesque santur master Ostad Manoochehr Sadeghi

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Video Comments:
RTpanzertime (Saturday 11th of October 2008 04:40:14 PM)
Simply amazing. That would work very well as the background of a title sequence for a movie (I'm thinking a Japanese movie).
overclockeador (Sunday 27th of July 2008 09:29:44 AM)
Yes, it's amazing.... tnx for the history lesson...
overclockeador (Saturday 26th of July 2008 11:05:15 AM)
This was made whit sprites or poligons?
postingoldtapes (Saturday 26th of July 2008 09:02:07 PM)
This was 1975, and I believe it was before the invention of either sprites or any polygon drawing techniques. Dick Shoup built the first framebubber in 1974, Evans & Sutherland didn't make a commercial one until 1975. Frambuffers didn't have the power to draw like this for another decade. That's why I believe this was drawn on a vector display, which was filmed. The Star Wars animations (in Episode IV) were done in that way at the University of Chicago.
postingoldtapes (Saturday 26th of July 2008 09:16:21 PM)
The vector display (see old Asteroids and Tempest arcade machines) was probably monochrome, and color was added with various filters. And overlapping graphics of different colors were done by rolling the film back and double-exposing it. All of which makes Whitney's work even more amazing.
fatherwkd (Saturday 31st of May 2008 02:53:04 AM)
Thanks for posting this VID.!
guimbadriver (Sunday 4th of May 2008 07:49:13 PM)
hey theres a movie called WESTWORLD is a movie from 1973 theres a take in a control room that a color computer screem shows a multicolor 3D triangles flying in the screem, its was the first computer graphics sample..
postingoldtapes (Monday 5th of May 2008 06:43:40 PM)
I'm not sure is John Whitney had anything to do with that, but his work predated 1973. He actually built clockworks to draw with light directly on film, then mechanical analog computers...digital computers only appeared fairly late in his career.
Yehan44surreal (Monday 22nd of September 2008 04:59:09 PM)
are those mathematics equations plot in a graph? or how else are they done? thanks good luck peace
postingoldtapes (Tuesday 23rd of September 2008 10:13:38 PM)
I'm not sure exactly how Whitney accomplished what he did at the time. I'd love to read a book about him. I do that some of his early stuff was made by combining Lissajous patterns with shutters to cut up the forms as they were being traced on the film. The Wikipedia page on him has links to several books, but no real information.