1939) worked as a Bell Telephone Laboratories researcher, and developed a wide-reaching vision for the possibilities of the digital computer for the arts, in the early 1960s. Silent original, soundtrack addition of Igor Stravinsky’s “Apollo”, 2:33 min.Ī. Image caption: Ken Knowlton (left) with Leon Harmon in 1969 with their computer-generated picture “Studies in Perception I.” Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center. In the second half of the 1960s and into the 1970s, Knowlton closely collaborated with the artists Stan VanDerBeek and Lillian Schwartz on their abstract animated films that incorporated computer animations. In Knowlton’s case, the film was animation that explained in detail how he used BEFLIX to create animated films. One of the first films that Knowlton made using BEFLIX was a movie like Zajac’s, made for communicating new technical knowledge. In all, the language consisted of about 25 types of commands, with programs punched onto paper cards. Knowlton’s new language was called BEFLIX (for “Bell Flicks”) and allowed a programmer to describe shapes in a 252 by 184 array of dots, and their motions and transformations. Knowlton developed a new computer language for making what he called “computer-produced movies,” animated films using the same IBM 7090 mainframe and SC-4020 microfilm plotter as had Zajac. He saw Edward Zajac’s 1963 computer-animated film of a satellite at the Labs and became extremely interested: “…that was exciting because…it was a new way to make animated movies that are technically accurate…expressing your intent in terms of computer programs.” After earning a PhD in computing from MIT, Knowlton joined a computer research group at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1960s. 1931) would go on to have a profound role in the early development of computer animation, both as a tool for technical communication and as a tool for artistic expression. originalīorn on his family’s farm in upstate New York, Ken Knowlton (b. As Zajac explained in 1964, “The cost depends, of course, on how complicated the movie is.” Image caption: Edward E. So too would persist Zajac’s awareness of the cost of computer animation, mostly the cost of the computer resources required to produce it. As a “movie,” he saw it adding something other media used in science and engineering could not: “…the ability to see a process evolve in time.” Movement and time would become signature concerns of computer animated films in the decade that would follow, and beyond. In 1963, Zajac produced this pioneering computer film, “Simulation of a Two-Gyro Gravity-Gradient Attitude Control System.” It was a computer animation intended as “a useful scientific tool” for presenting technical information and representing data. Zajac saw that the microfilm plotter was capable of recording shapes as well as characters, and of producing series of changing shapes under precise computer control. The microfilm plotter was originally developed for capturing text output extremely rapidly, to match the speed of the computer, by optically recording documents on “microfilm,” which was the same sort of 16mm film used for cinema production. This was the SC-4020 microfilm plotter, then manufactured by General Dynamics. Further, he saw that he could make a novel, unintended use of one of the computer’s unusual output devices. Zajac realized that it would not be difficult to describe a perspective drawing of a satellite rotating the Earth as a computer program for the Labs’ mainframe computer, and IBM 7090. Zajac worked on the mathematics of stabilizing satellites, and to communicate his results to his colleagues and others he helped to open an entirely new medium: computer animation. Part of the challenge of this new technology was controlling the satellites’ position as it rotated the Earth. At Bell Labs, Zajac was drawn into the effort there to develop communication satellites. Zajac (1926-2011) joined the famous Bell Telephone Laboratories shortly after earning a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1950. Courtesy AT&T Archives and History CenterĮdward E.
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