I had access to it for hours at a time.”įor someone who denies being able to see into the future, Sutherland has a remarkable record of helping to create it. “I had the great good fortune of the most powerful computer in the world,” Sutherland said. “It had input and output devices suitable for doing graphics. He did know, however, that he was in a good situation to do interesting things. I had no idea of what would happen in the future, nor did I think of it much. I asked Sutherland if he knew he was jump-starting a revolution which would go on for decades when he created Sketchpad. Sutherland’s work influenced that of the people who devised the basics of the graphical user interfaces we still use today, including mouse inventor Douglas Engelbart and Xerox PARC researchers such as Alan Kay. Note that the program is described as “a man actually talking to a computer,” which prompts the interviewer, slightly agog at the idea, to ask “Surely not with his voice?” It wasn’t just computer graphics which were new at the time the very notion of easily interacting with a computer in real time, without feeding it punch cards or flipping switches, was dazzling. Sketchpad was so clever that it’s still cool today it must have been unimaginably so almost fifty years ago. Here it is - and even if you don’t watch all twenty minutes’ worth, I suggest you at least skim ahead to the demo section, which begins at 3:30.
Sketchpad ivan sutherland software#
It used an oscilloscope for a display, allowed the user to draw with a light pen and ran on MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s TX-2, which had a then-remarkable 64KB of memory.įortunately for us, MIT produced a TV show about Sketchpad in 1964, featuring several researchers talking about the software and showing it off. In 1963, while a student at MIT, Sutherland created a highly interactive drawing-and-design program called Sketchpad, at a time when the concept of computer graphics barely existed. I got to chat with him recently about his work and the prize. Sutherland, who was born in 1938, isn’t a household name, but there’s nobody more deserving of such as honor.
Kazuo Inamori, founder of not one but two major Japanese companies - Kyocera and KDDI - is a Nobel-like honor given to individuals each year for advanced technology, basic sciences and arts and philosophy.
Follow Ivan Sutherland is the 2012 winner of the Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology.
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