Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Activities at M.I.T. took place in several different laboratories, including the Lincoln Labs, the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the Architecture Machine Group and the Media Lab. Jay Forrester of the Servomechanisms Lab was chosen by Gordon Brown to develop the Whirlwind computer in the mid-40s. The Whirlwind and Forrester were moved to the Digital Computer Lab and started focusing on using the computer for graphics displays, for air traffic control and gunfire control, and became part of the government's SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) program.

Ivan Sutherland, acknowledged by many to be the "grandfather" of interactive computer graphics, worked on his PhD in EE in the Lincoln Labs on their TX-2 computer. His dissertation centered around an interactive computer drawing program that he called Sketchpad, which was published in 1963. His contributions moved graphics from a military laboratory tool to the world of engineering and design. Sutherland made a movie of the interactive use of Sketchpad, which became somewhat of a cult film. Every major lab in the country had a copy of the film, and researchers and students referred to it over and over as it influenced their developmental work.

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies was founded in 1967 by Gyorgy Kepes with the intent to combine the efforts of the disciplines of art and science. Other fellows at CAVS extended this idea of artists working on projects with the assistance of engineers and scientists.

The Media Laboratory was formed in 1980 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner, growing out of the Architecture Machine Group, and building on the seminal work of faculty members such as Marvin Minsky in cognition, Seymour Papert in learning, Barry Vercoe in music, Muriel Cooper in graphic design, Andrew Lippman in video, and Stephen Benton in holography. The media Lab carries on advanced research into a broad range of information technologies including digital television, holographic imaging, computer music, computer vision, electronic publishing, artificial intelligence, human/machine interface design, and education-related technologies. Its charter is to invent and creatively exploit new media for human well-being and individual satisfaction without regard to present-day constraints. They employ supercomputers and extraordinary input/output devices to experiment today with notions that will be commonplace tomorrow. The not-so-hidden agenda is to drive technological inventions and break engineering deadlocks with new perspectives and demanding applications. (From the www.media.mit.edu web site overview page)

Ivan Sutherland

Ivan Sutherland at the console of the TX-2 using Sketchpad

  Whirlwind computer

  Whirlwind computer core memory

  Whirlwind computer display at the Computer Museum