computer graphics in the 1950s

On Thu, 16 Oct 2008, Richard wrote: Which is MUCH more fun. Another fundamental flaw that we've been very merciful about, is that all PUBLIC definitions would only include those machines that were in such massive production that it was the first one that that writer was cognizant of. But the REAL first one was the prototype in my uncle's basement that never went into production, and that nobody knows about. I saw a CE connect an oscillosope to the innards of a machine for troubleshooting. He was looking at a bunch of squiggly pictures on it. Does that count? He also had a smaller box that he called a "vom" with some knobs and a dial, and the needle on it was bouncing back and forth in time with the actions of the computer! Surely nobody could question that a Calcomp 570 was a graphics device. But there were other plodders long before the etch-a-sketch (which I have seen interfaced to a home computer!) One of the engineers from pre-production NeXT said, "the difference between our computer and an etch-a-sketch is that you have to shake the etch-a-sketch to make the screen go blank." Oh, you meant a computer with a screen showing "point addressable" pixels! Everybody knows that it was the PC, invented by Al Gore and Bill Gates in 1986. Or one of those prototypes of the iPod that Steve Jobs invented, called the Macapple or something, which was also the first computer with a mouse and a user interface. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com