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Vector General 3D
Vector General (VG) was a series of graphics terminals and the name of the Californian company that produced them. They were first introduced in 1969 and were used in computer labs until the early 1980s. The terminals were based on a common platform that read vectors provided by a host minicomputer and included hardware that could perform basic mathematical transformations in the terminal. This greatly improved the performance of operations like rotating an object or zooming in. The transformed vectors were then displayed on the terminal's built-in vector monitor. In contrast to similar terminals from other vendors, the Vector General systems included little internal memory. Instead, they stored vectors on the host computer's memory and accessed them via direct memory access (DMA). Fully equipped VG3D terminals ran at about $31,000 including a low-end PDP-11 computer, compared to machines like the IBM 2250 which cost $100,000 for just the terminal. Among a number of famous uses kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graphics Terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical computer hardware, hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The Teleprinter, teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and predated the use of a computer screen by decades. Early terminals were inexpensive devices but very slow compared to punched cards or punched tape, paper tape for input, yet as the technology improved and video displays were introduced, terminals pushed these older forms of interaction from the industry. A related development was time-sharing systems, which evolved in parallel and made up for any inefficiencies in the user's typing ability with the ability to support multiple users on the same machine, each at their own terminal or terminals. The function of a terminal is typically confined to transcription and input of data; a device with significant local, programmable data-processing capability may be ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raster Scanning
A raster scan, or raster scanning, is the rectangular pattern of image capture and reconstruction in television. By analogy, the term is used for raster graphics, the pattern of image storage and transmission used in most computer bitmap image systems. The word ''raster'' comes from the Latin word ''rastrum'' (a rake), which is derived from '' radere'' (to scrape); see also rastrum, an instrument for drawing musical staff lines. The pattern left by the lines of a rake, when drawn straight, resembles the parallel lines of a raster: this line-by-line scanning is what creates a raster. It is a systematic process of covering the area progressively, one line at a time. Although often a great deal faster, it is similar in the most general sense to how one's gaze travels when one reads lines of text. The data to be drawn is stored in an area of memory called the Framebuffer. This memory area holds the values for each pixel on the screen. These values are retrieved from the refresh buff ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Cuba
Larry Cuba (born 1950) is a computer-animation artist who became active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Born in 1950 in Atlanta, Georgia, he received A.B. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1972 and his Master's Degree from California Institute of the Arts which includes parallel schools of Dance, Music, Film, Theater, Fine Arts, and Writing. The Cal Arts faculty included abstract animator Jules Engel, Expanded Cinema critic Gene Youngblood, and special effects artist Pat O'Neill. In 1975, John Whitney, Sr. invited Cuba to be the programmer on one of his films. The result of this collaboration was ''Arabesque''. Subsequently, Cuba produced three more computer-animated films: ''3/78 (Objects and Transformations)'', ''Two Space'', and ''Calculated Movements''. Cuba also provided computer graphics for '' Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope'' in 1977. His animation of the Death Star is shown to pilots in the Rebel Alliance. Cuba received grants for his work from the American ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death Star Attack Briefing
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain death is sometimes used as a legal definition of death. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose shortly after death. Death is an inevitable process that eventually occurs in almost all organisms. Death is generally applied to whole organisms; the similar process seen in individual components of an organism, such as cells or tissues, is necrosis. Something that is not considered an organism, such as a virus, can be physically destroyed but is not said to die. As of the early 21st century, over 150,000 humans die each day, with ageing being by far the most common cause of death. Many cultures and religions have the idea of an afterlife, and also may hold the idea of judgement of good and bad deeds in one's life (heaven, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Aided Design
Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve communications through documentation, and to create a database for manufacturing. Designs made through CAD software are helpful in protecting products and inventions when used in patent applications. CAD output is often in the form of electronic files for print, machining, or other manufacturing operations. The terms computer-aided drafting (CAD) and computer aided design and drafting (CADD) are also used. Its use in designing electronic systems is known as ''electronic design automation'' (''EDA''). In mechanical design it is known as ''mechanical design automation'' (''MDA''), which includes the process of creating a technical drawing with the use of computer software. CAD software for mechanical design uses either vector-based graphics t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star Wars (film)
''Star Wars'' (retroactively titled ''Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope'') is a 1977 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the first film in the '' Star Wars'' film series and fourth chronological chapter of the " Skywalker Saga". Set "a long time ago" in a fictional universe where the galaxy is ruled by the tyrannical Galactic Empire, the story focuses on a group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance, who aim to destroy the Empire's newest weapon, the Death Star. Luke Skywalker becomes caught in the conflict while learning the ways of a metaphysical power known as "the Force" from Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The cast includes Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, and Peter Mayhew. Lucas had the idea for a science-fiction film in the vein of '' Flash Gordon'' aro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of technical limitations of computer systems at the time it was invented, ASCII has just 128 code points, of which only 95 are , which severely limited its scope. All modern computer systems instead use Unicode, which has millions of code points, but the first 128 of these are the same as the ASCII set. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) prefers the name US-ASCII for this character encoding. ASCII is one of the List of IEEE milestones, IEEE milestones. Overview ASCII was developed from telegraph code. Its first commercial use was as a seven-bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services. Work on the ASCII standard began in May 1961, with the first meeting of the American Standards Association's (ASA) (now the American Nat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Data Structure Alignment
Data structure alignment is the way data is arranged and accessed in computer memory. It consists of three separate but related issues: data alignment, data structure padding, and packing. The CPU in modern computer hardware performs reads and writes to memory most efficiently when the data is ''naturally aligned'', which generally means that the data's memory address is a multiple of the data size. For instance, in a 32-bit architecture, the data may be aligned if the data is stored in four consecutive bytes and the first byte lies on a 4-byte boundary. ''Data alignment'' is the aligning of elements according to their natural alignment. To ensure natural alignment, it may be necessary to insert some ''padding'' between structure elements or after the last element of a structure. For example, on a 32-bit machine, a data structure containing a 16-bit value followed by a 32-bit value could have 16 bits of ''padding'' between the 16-bit value and the 32-bit value to align the 32-b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Line Chart
A line chart or line graph or curve chart is a type of chart which displays information as a series of data points called 'markers' connected by straight line segments. It is a basic type of chart common in many fields. It is similar to a scatter plot except that the measurement points are ordered (typically by their x-axis value) and joined with straight line segments. A line chart is often used to visualize a trend in data over intervals of time – a time series – thus the line is often drawn chronologically. In these cases they are known as run charts. History Some of the earliest known line charts are generally credited to Francis Hauksbee, Nicolaus Samuel Cruquius, Johann Heinrich Lambert and William Playfair. Example In the experimental sciences, data collected from experiments are often visualized by a graph. For example, if one collects data on the speed of an object at certain points in time, one can visualize the data in a data table such as the following: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Refrigerator
A refrigerator, colloquially fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to its external environment so that its inside is cooled to a temperature below the room temperature. Refrigeration is an essential food storage technique around the world. The lower temperature lowers the reproduction rate of bacteria, so the refrigerator reduces the rate of spoilage. A refrigerator maintains a temperature a few degrees above the freezing point of water. The optimal temperature range for perishable food storage is .Keep your fridge-freezer clean and ice-free ''BBC''. 30 April 2008 A similar device that maintains a temperature below the freezing point of water is called a freezer. The refrigerator replaced the icebox, which had been a common household appliance for almost a century and a half. The United States Food and Drug Administration recommends tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joystick
A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal control device in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a centre stick or side-stick. It often has supplementary switches to control various aspects of the aircraft's flight. Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer. A popular variation of the joystick used on modern video game consoles is the analog stick. Joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as cranes, trucks, underwater unmanned vehicles, wheelchairs, surveillance cameras, and zero turning radius lawn mowers. Miniature finger-operated joysticks have been adopted as input devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones. Aviation Joystic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dial Box
A dial box is a computer peripheral for direct 3D manipulation e.g. to interactively input the rotation and torsion angles of a model displayed on a computer screen. Dial boxes were common input tools in the first years of interactive 3D graphics and they were available for Silicon Graphics (SGI) or Sun Microsystems and sold with their workstations. Currently they have been replaced by standard computer mouse interaction techniques. Standard dial box has 8 dials mounted on a plate. The plate is set upright with the help of a stand and usually located next to the computer screen for convenient access. The connection to a computer is made via the serial port (RS-232). One of the fields of application for dial boxes was molecular graphics. Dial box models At least two different models of dial boxes were sold with the SGI brand. DLS80-1022 (SGI part number 9980992) was made by Danaher controls, has 8 large dials and a single DE-9 connector which contains both the power and da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
