Ivan Sutherland

Ivan Edward Sutherland is a computer programmer and Internet pioneer. He was born in 1938, in Hasting, Nebraska. Sutherland studied Electrical Engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and gained his Bachelor’s degree. He also gained his Master’s degree from Caltech and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from MIT. He is a member of: -- The National Academy of Engineering
- The National Academy of Sciences
- The Association for Computing Machinery

He has been a professor at Harvard University (1966-1968), the University of Utah (1968-1974) and the California Institute of Technology (1974-1978). In 1968 he co-founded Evans & Sutherland with his friend David Evans. Evans & Sutherland was a computer firm involved in the computer graphics field. In 2006 it joined companies with Spitz, (a major company in the production of dome theaters). Their company is best known for the Genesis Device simulation sequence in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, which one of there computers was used to create. It was one of the first computer graphic sequences ever used in a movie. He is currently a Vice President and Fellow at Sun Microsystems.Sutherland is best known for his creation, the Sketchpad. It was a computer program, written in 1963 in the course of his PhD thesis, for which he received the Turing Award in 1988. Sketchpad was the first program to ever utilize a complete GUI (Graphical User Interface). It also: -- It could draw both horizontal and vertical lines and combine them into figures and shapes.
- It could copy, move, rotate, and resize figures, while retaining their basic properties.
- Had the first window-drawing program and clipping algorithm, which allowed zooming. Sutherland is also known for what is widely considered to be the first virtual reality and augmented reality head-mounted display system. In 1968, with the help of his student Bob Sproull he created the system, which is known as The Sword of Damocles. It was was primitive both in terms of user interface and realism, and the graphics comprising the virtual environment were simple wireframe rooms. It was head to the point, that it had to be support from the ceiling by a mechanical arm.Ivan Sutherland is a pioneer because of his creation the Sktechpad. It is seen as where computer graphics formally began. His vision helped in the creation of computer graphics. His work allowed for the realization of the potential of computer graphics.