Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Global Age

Sketchpad — Sutherland

1963 AD · Transmission: Global
ComputingInventionNorth American

Ivan Sutherland develops Sketchpad at MIT as part of his doctoral thesis, creating the first interactive computer graphics system. It allows drawing with a light pen on screen, manipulating geometric objects with constraints, and copying instances. It establishes the foundational concepts of computer graphics, CAD, and the graphical user interface, starting the academic lineage from which the entire 3D rendering industry emerges.

InstitutionMIT — Lincoln Laboratory
Historical regionUSA — Cambridge, Massachusetts
Primary sourceSutherland, I.E. — Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System, MIT PhD thesis (1963)
Original languageEnglish
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