"The Computer Graphics Book Of Knowledge"

Computer graphics began in the 1940s and 1950s as a visualization tool for government and corporate researchers at Bell Labs and Boeing before expanding into university labs such as MIT, Ohio State, and the University of Utah in the 1960s and 1970s. MIT professors Parry Moon and Domina Eberle Spencer produced one of the earliest radiosity images in the 1940s, calculating global lighting models by hand and assembling the output from Munsell paper samples because no display technology existed. Artist John Whitney Sr. built his own computer-assisted mechanisms for graphic artwork and short films in the 1950s, training his son John Whitney Jr. from childhood. Commercial studios including George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic now drive much of the field's cutting-edge work, alongside academic and corporate R&D programs worldwide. What to watch next is how entertainment production companies versus university labs shape the next generation of digital imaging tools.