Sutherland, Ivan

1938–

Computer Graphics Pioneer

Ivan Sutherland has been credited as the father of computer graphics, and has made significant contributions to virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 3D representations and simulation, computer-aided design (CAD), graphics hardware, integrated-circuit design, and robotics. His Sketchpad program, years ahead of its time, provided a new way of interfacing with computers, and influenced engineers for years to come. He is presently a vice president and research fellow at Sun Microsystems.

Sutherland had the distinction of being one of the earliest students to enter the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) as an undergraduate having already gained some programming experience. When he was a teenager, the Sutherland family was lent a computer called SIMON by its inventor, Edmund Berkeley. SIMON was arguably the first true personal electronic computer. Programming this machine entailed creating a machine code in punched tape, which was then fed through the computer. The young Sutherland wrote a program that allowed the computer to perform division—a significant programming task at the time.

Sutherland went on to earn a bachelors degree at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1959, followed by a masters degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1960, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1963.

At MIT, Sutherland studied under Claude Shannon, one of the originators of information theory, and became interested in the idea of computer graphics. His dissertation described a basic drawing program that he called Sketchpad. Sketchpad was important not only in making use of computer-generated graphics, but also in changing the way that people could interact with a computer. Using a light pen, a user could touch and move points, and the computer would respond by straightening lines and curves to correct for any small mistakes, or by offering pop-up menus. This use of a pointing device and graphic feedback would open the door for the graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that we use today, and served as a strong influence on later pioneers in computer interaction like Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart.

At a meeting on interactive graphics organized by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Sutherland was asked to give a talk on his research. J. C. R. Licklider, who would come to be known as one of the originators of large-scale computer networking, was so impressed by Sutherland's research that he arranged for him to work as an ARPA administrator after graduation. After a short stint at the National Security Agency, Sutherland spent two years working for ARPA, overseeing projects and distributing a sizable amount of funding.

In 1966, Sutherland joined the faculty at Harvard University. With the help of Robert Sproull, he designed the first head-mounted display (HMD), a display screen mounted inside a helmet that changed perspective as the user's head moved. Although displays had been mounted in helmets before, Sutherland was the first to use them to display computer-generated images, wire-frame models in three dimensions that were produced using computing hardware designed specifically for the project. There was a pole mounted between the helmet and the ceiling, used to track head movements, and this led to the device being nicknamed the Sword of Damocles. Although it would be nearly two decades before this work would be advanced by others, Sutherland's system is considered to be the first primitive example of VR. Since the images could be traced onto semi-transparent lenses, giving the illusion of simulated objects existing in real space, this is also seen as the first AR system.

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