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Don’t Write it. Draw It.

Winking Girl (“Nefertite” [sic])

Sketchpad could be used for simple animation by switching quickly between slightly different images, as if they were frames on a filmstrip. The lower portion shows the components used to make the winking face.

Don’t Write it. Draw It.

“Sketchpad…by eliminating typed statements in favor of line drawings, opens up a new area of man-machine communications,” observed Ivan Sutherland, who developed the system in 1963 as a PhD student at MIT.

Blossoming into the best known of the early drawing applications, Sketchpad influenced a generation of design and drafting programs. Although used mostly for engineering drawings, it had some artistic applications, including a famous drawing of “Nefertite” that could be animated to a limited extent.

Ivan Sutherland demonstrating Sketchpad on the TX-2

Sutherland demonstrates the Sketchpad program, part of his MIT PhD thesis and generally recognized as the first computer-aided drafting (CAD) program. Drawings were highly structured. Changing a master object template changed all instances of its use.

View Artifact Detail

“The Sketchpad system makes it possible for a man and a computer to converse rapidly through the medium of line drawings.”

Ivan Sutherlandcreator of Sketchpad
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