Overview

Overview

The term computer graphics has been used in a broad sense to describe "almost everything on computers that is not text or sound". Typically, the term computer graphics refers to several different things:

• the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer
• the various technologies used to create and manipulate images
• the images so produced, and
• the sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content, see study of computer graphics

Today, computers and computer-generated images touch many aspects of our daily life. Computer imagery is found on television, in newspapers, for example in their weather reports, or for example in all kinds of medical investigation and surgical procedures. A well-constructed graph can present complex statistics in a form that is easier to understand and interpret. In the media "such graphs are used to illustrate papers, reports, theses", and other presentation material.

Many powerful tools have been developed to visualize data. Computer generated imagery can be categorized into several different types: 2D, 3D, and animated graphics. As technology has improved, 3D computer graphics have become more common, but 2D computer graphics are still widely used. Computer graphics has emerged as a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Over the past decade, other specialized fields have been developed like information visualization, and scientific visualization more concerned with "the visualization of three dimensional phenomena (architectural, meteorological, medical, biological, etc.), where the emphasis is on realistic renderings of volumes, surfaces, illumination sources, and so forth, perhaps with a dynamic (time) component".

History

The phrase “Computer Graphics” was coined in 1960 by William Fetter, a graphic designer for Boeing.^[4] The field of computer graphics developed with the emergence of computer graphics hardware. Early projects like the Whirlwind and SAGE Projects introduced the CRT as a viable display and interaction interface and introduced the light pen as an input device.

SAGE Sector Control Room.

Further advances in computing led to greater advancements in interactive computer graphics. In 1959, the TX-2 computer was developed at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. The TX-2 integrated a number of new man-machine interfaces. A light pen could be used to draw sketches on the computer using Ivan Sutherland's revolutionary Sketchpad software. The development of Sketchpad made Ivan Sutherland the "grandfather" of interactive computer graphics and graphical user interfaces.

The research at MIT "would help shape the early computer and computer graphics industries". Major corporations soon became interested in the technology. IBM quickly responded "by releasing the IBM 2250 graphics terminal, the first commercially available graphics computer". Several computer graphics companies were founded in the mid 1960s including TRW, Lockheed-Georgia, General Electric and Sperry Rand.

In 1969, the ACM initiated A Special Interest Group in Graphics (SIGGRAPH) which organizes conferences, graphics standards, and publications within the field of computer graphics. In 1973, the first annual SIGGRAPH conference was held, which has become one of the focuses of the organization. SIGGRAPH has grown in size and importance as the field of computer graphics has expanded over time. Many of the most important early breakthroughs in computer graphics research occurred at the University of Utah in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, artists and graphic designers began to see the personal computer, particularly the Commodore Amiga and Macintosh, as a serious design tool, one that could save time and draw more accurately than other methods. In the late 1980s, SGI computers were used to create some of the first fully computer-generated short films at Pixar. The Macintosh remains a highly popular tool for computer graphics among graphic design studios and businesses. Modern computers, dating from the 1980s often use graphical user interfaces (GUI) to present data and information with symbols, icons and pictures, rather than text. Graphics are one of the five key elements of multimedia technology.

3D graphics became more popular in the 1990s in gaming, multimedia and animation. In 1996, Quake, one of the first fully 3D games, was released. In 1995, Toy Story, the first full-length computer-generated animation film, was released in cinemas worldwide. Since then, computer graphics have only become more detailed and realistic, due to more powerful graphics hardware and 3D modeling software.