Author | Nian Suqing
Editor in charge | Wang Xiaoman
Production | Program Life (ID: coder _life)
Ivan Edward Sutherland is the "father of computer graphics". He designed the computer program "drawing board" and created the history of interactive computer graphics. He also invented the world's first head-mounted display, known as the "father of virtual reality."
The growth path of a great engineer
Su Zelan was born in Hastings, Nebraska, USA in 1938. Her father is a civil engineer and her mother is a teacher. Since he was a child, he likes to get to the bottom of the principle and aspires to become an engineer when he grows up.
When Su Zelan was in middle school, the computer had just come out. Many young people were attracted to it. Su Zelan was no exception. He even designed and assembled some computing devices that work with relays. These simple devices made Su Zelan and the computer puzzled. edge.
In 1959, Su Zelan received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and a master's degree from California Institute of Technology the following year. These two universities have high authority in the fields of electrical engineering and computer science. A solid professional foundation. At the same time, Su Zelan went to IBM for internships during holidays and accumulated rich practical experience.
Father of Computer Graphics
After that, Su Zelan entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to pursue a doctorate degree, under the tutelage of Claude Shannon, the pioneer of information theory.
At that time, the laboratory had a very advanced computer TX-2, equipped with a keyboard, monitor and light pen, and supported online. Many doctoral students rushed to play the video game SpaceWar on it, and Su Zelan was inspired by it-people can be realized on it. Real-time interaction of the computer. After communicating and discussing with his supervisor, his doctoral dissertation project revolved around a 3-dimensional interactive graphics system. With a solid professional foundation and hard work, Su Zelan finally completed this arduous and complex task in 3 years and successfully developed the famous "Sketchpad" system.
In order to produce the best results when defending the thesis, Su Zelan also produced a film called "Sketchpad: A Man Machine Graphical Communication System" ("Sketchpad: A Man Machine Graphical Communication System". He showed it while explaining, and the defense was extremely successful. A big success, the defense committee unanimously gave Su Zelan's doctoral thesis "excellent".
The early computer graphics system could only use the keyboard to input complex codes and commands to describe the geometric shape of the product. Su Zelan’s research results have completely changed this cumbersome operation method. People only need to use hand-held objects such as light pens to create on the computer screen. Draw a three-dimensional geometric image, the viewable sample can be freely zoomed in and out, saved and copied. The "drawing board" makes it possible to design the world by hand on the screen, and has played a major role in promoting the development of important applications such as graphical interfaces, computer simulation, flight simulators, CAD/CAM, and electronic game consoles.
Su Zelan is also known as the "Father of Computer Graphics" because of the great success of "Drawing Board".
"The Father of Virtual Reality "
After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a PhD, Su Zelan chose to enlist in the army and worked in the security department. He participated in the development of radar and infrared tracking systems, and later transferred to the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). In 1964, Su Zelan, who was only 26 years old, was appointed director of the Office of Information Processing Technology with the rank of lieutenant. During this period, he was mainly responsible for researching time division operating systems and artificial intelligence. This experience not only exercised his leadership skills, but also gave him the opportunity to deal with some of the most important companies and research institutions in the United States, and met many well-known people, which will give him a very important boost to his future career.
After leaving the army, Su Zelan entered Harvard University to teach. In addition to continuing to cultivate in computer graphics, he also began to dabble in virtual reality research. He published a paper titled "Ultimate Dispaly", which discussed the basic ideas of interactive graphic displays, force feedback devices, and voice prompts for virtual reality systems, which became the beginning of virtual reality technology. He also invented the world’s first head-mounted display, which directly integrates people into the three-dimensional virtual world generated by the human brain and computer. The head-mounted display shows images on a small computer screen in the binoculars worn by the user. A perspective view of objects moving with people. Suzer is therefore also known as the "father of virtual reality."
Peaches and plums everywhere
In 1967, at the invitation of the famous scholar David Evans (David Evans), Su Zelan transferred from Harvard University to the University of Utah. Like Su Zelan, Evans also has a strong interest in computer graphics. The two co-founded the Computer Graphics Research Center and trained a group of graphics masters and well-known entrepreneurs, including the pioneers of graphical user interface Alan Kay, Edwin Catmull, the inventor of z buffering and one of the founders of Pixar, developed the Warnock algorithm, and John Warnock, one of the founders of Adobe.
During this period, Nolan Bushnell, a student of Su Zelan, developed the famous game software "Pong" under his guidance, and Su Zelan himself also has many scientific research results, such as the Lorgnette technology used to display stereo and color images.
In 1976, Su Zelan came to California Institute of Technology, founded the computer department of the school and served as the head of the department. Here, he made circuit design a subject, and made many important contributions in the field of large-scale circuit and chip design, paving the way for the subsequent revolution in Silicon Valley.
Successful entrepreneur
In addition to fruitful academic achievements, Su Zelan has also made considerable achievements in the commercial field.
In 1968, Sutherland and Evans jointly established Evans & Sutherland Co., whose main products were flight training devices and CAD tools. The company's products and the company's irregularly published "Evans&Sutherland Newsletter", which mainly publishes articles on computer simulation technology, have won the company a high reputation. The company was listed on the Nasdaq in 1978 and is still in operation today, and is the only full-solution provider of digital cinema.
In 1980, Sutherland and his superior son Robert Sproull co-founded Sutherland, Sproull&Associates when he was at DARPA, mainly engaged in product development and marketing in computer graphics. The company also studies computer architecture, logic circuits, etc., and has also achieved some results. Some of the results have also applied for and obtained patents, such as the "asynchronous queue system", which was awarded a US patent in 1987. Ten years later, the company was acquired by Sun, and Su Zelan served as Sun's vice president for many years.
Combine computer with geometry
Su Zelan likes computers and geometry, and is committed to combining the two. A genius computer guru Alan Kay once asked him why he could solve such a complicated computer graphics problem in such a short period of time. His answer was: "Because I didn't realize it was so complicated at the time."
In SketchPad’s thesis, Su Zelan creatively compared SketchPad to design behavior itself, and gave a precise definition to computer-aided design: “We can regard the process of drawing operations on SketchPad itself as a design process-more settings The dot and multi-line drawing methods are similar to the rich creativity generated in the design process; but the limited geometric shapes formed by the dots and lines are also similar to the limited variety that can be brought about by the design constraints for product value."
He said: "The extent to which SketchPad geometry can meet the requirements of designers is equivalent to how effective a good designer can use limited materials and limited costs to make designs that meet various needs. When such a design When conditions are added to SketchPad's restricted list, computers can not only help users draw beautiful drawings, but also help people make safer and more reasonable designs."
Su Zelan distinguished between "building a thing on a computer" and "drawing a thing on a drawing". At the same time, he pointed out the diversity of design performance and the limitation of design execution. Eternal conflict between.
Honor plus
Because of his outstanding contributions in the field of computer graphics, Su Zelan was awarded the Turing Award by the American Computer Association (ACM) in 1988 and the Software System Award in 1994;
In 1975, the Society of Systems, Management and Cybernetics awarded Su Zelan the "Outstanding Achievement Award";
In 1986, IEEE awarded him the Piol Prize;
In addition, he was also the first winner of the Zivoli Gold Medal from the American Academy of Engineering.
Reference link:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_d01f29a10101m89p.html
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%BC%8A%E5%87%A1%C2%B7%E8%8B%8F%E6%B3%BD%E5%85%B0/628367?fromtitle=ivan%20sutherland&fromid=9969217&fr=aladdin
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