History of digital modelling

-Early 2D design-

7^th – 13^th Century: Books were created by hand, one by one. These books were usually religious in nature.

11^th Century: The Chinese developed a form of simple printing.

15^th Century: Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. From there, the production and distribution of printed text and images in volumes was made possible. Century’s late printing was done mechanically.

Mid-19^th Century: Colour printings were available, however, before any book or newspaper could be printed, the production and layout still needed to be done by hand.

-Early 3D Design-

1950: Ben Laposky uses oscilloscope to display waveforms which were photographed as artwork.

1951: Mr. Potato Head invented; later starred in ‘Toy Story’.

1960: William Fetter of Boeing coins the term ‘Computer graphics’ for his human factors cockpit drawings.

1963: DAC-1, first commercial CAD system, developed in 1959 by IBM for general motors. William Fetter creates the ‘First Man’ digital human foe cockpit studies.

1967: First full colour real time interactive flight simulator for NASA by Rod Rougelet.

1968: Sutherland Head Mounted Display, developed in 1966, shown at AFIPS.  

1969: Graphical User Interface, GUI, developed by Xerox.

1970: Pierre Bezier from Renault develops Bezier freeform curve representations.

1975: Phong shading was created by Bui-Toung Phone (University of Utah).

1977: Computer Graphics World begins publication.

1978: James Blinn introduces ‘Bump Mapping’.

1980: Turner Whitted of Bell Labs publishes ray tracing paper, an improved illumination model for shaded display.

1982: ‘Tron’ the first most expensive computer graphics movie was released by Disney.

1983: Autodesk introduces first PC- based CAD software.

1984: 1^st computer generated 30 second commercial used for Super Bowl.

1987: VGA (Video Graphics Array) invented by IBM, Adobe illustrator was created.

1989: First release of Adobe Photoshop, Industrial lights & magic creates the Abyss.

1992: Release of 3D effects movie, ‘The Lawnmower Man’.

1993: Jurassic Park was released.

1995: Release of ‘Toy Story’ by Pixar and DreamWorks was founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

1999: Star Wars Episode One – The Phantom Menace, uses 66 digital characters composited with live action.