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Ivan Sutherland Wins Kyoto Prize

Posted by samzenpus on from the and-the-winner-is dept.

cstacy writes "The Inamori Foundation has awarded the Kyoto Prize to graphics pioneer Ivan Sutherland, for developing Sketchpad in 1963. The award recognizes significant technical, scientific and artistic contributions to the 'betterment of mankind, and honors Sutherland him for nearly 50 years of demonstrating that computer graphics could be used "for both technical and artistic purposes.'"

8 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Kyoto Prize by rossdee · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is this something to do with preventing global warming?

  2. Sketchpad Video by Cito · · Score: 5, Informative

    Awesome video footage seeing Sketchpad in operation.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg

    1. Re:Sketchpad Video by GODISNOWHERE · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One thing that really caught my attention in this video was a throwaway comment about the input pen. It was found to be a failure because the blood would drain from the hand after about twenty seconds, leaving the user with a numb hand. Kay then goes on to say that the input pen had been reinvented about 90 times by other people in the twenty years since the demonstration. This underscores the importance of learning tech history. You can learn from the mistakes of others and avoid reinventing the wheel, and you can avoid being swept up in fads that plague the industry (touch based operating system, anyone?).

  3. Wiki article alone doesn't do it justice by SpazmodeusG · · Score: 5, Informative

    I recommend watching this video of Sketchpad narrated by Alan Kay. You have to remember this is from 1963. It demonstrated copy and paste, rotation and scaling, a pointer based graphical interface, and more. Pretty damn impressive.

  4. Steve Jobs! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Awesome video footage seeing Sketchpad in operation.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg

    Gee Steve Jobs looked different back then....

    Was this before he invented air and water, or after? ;-)

  5. Re:He's still alive and working by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2

    Er.. people staying alive and productive well into their 70s - and beyond - isn't exactly uncommon these days you know.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  6. Re:Never too late ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's a vector graphics program more closely related to Inkpad or even CAD programs than to Paint. It was written in a time where there was no computer graphics, let alone graphical user interfaces, and the output was basically an analogue oscilloscope. And he built a lot of the technology, including a new high-level proto-OOP language, himself in less than a year.

    Yeah, but other than that...

  7. Sketchpad source by Al+Kossow · · Score: 2

    was written in assembly language for the Lincoln Labs TX-2. Ivan has been asked by many people for the code and as far as I know he has never released it.