Computer Visualization for the Theatre

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Outlining the software and its development

The evolution of computer graphics and CAD programs

Computers have been used to represent graphical data, particularly in the defence industry, from the mid-1950s; the first projects that led to the development of what we would recognize as Computer Aided Design were carried out in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1959 General Motors developed DAC-1 (Design Augmented by Computers) and in 1962 Ivan Sutherland, an MIT PhD student, created the Sketchpad program. This pioneering piece of software used a light pen to draw images directly onto the screen. Only five years later Sutherland, working with David Evans, created the Scene Generator, which could represent 3D scenes as a series of dots in space ...