Sketchpad

Sketchpad (a.k.a. Robot Draftsman) is a computer program written by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 in the course of his PhD thesis, for which he received the Turing Award in 1988, and the Kyoto Prize in 2012. It pioneered human–computer interaction (HCI), and is considered the ancestor of modern computer-aided design (CAD) programs and as a major breakthrough in the development of computer graphics in general. For example, Sketchpad inspired the graphical user interface (GUI) and object-oriented programming. Using the program, Sutherland showed that computer graphics could be used for both artistic and technical purposes and for demonstrating a novel method of human–computer interaction.

History

See History of the graphical user interface for a more detailed discussion of GUI development.

Software

Sketchpad was the earliest program ever to use a complete graphical user interface.

The clever way the program organizes its geometric data pioneered the use of ''master'' ( objects) and ''occurrences'' ( instances) in computing and pointed forward to object-oriented programming. The main idea was to have master drawings which can be instantiated into many duplicates. When a master drawing is changed, then all instances change also.

Geometric constraints was another major invention in Sketchpad, letting a user easily constrain geometric properties in the drawing: for instance, the length of a line or the angle between two lines could be fixed.

As a trade magazine said, clearly Sutherland "broke new ground in 3D computer modeling and visual simulation, the basis for computer graphics and CAD/CAM". Very few programs can be called precedents for his achievements. Patrick J. Hanratty is sometimes called the "father of CAD/CAM" and wrote PRONTO, a numerical control language at General Electric in 1957, and wrote CAD software while working for General Motors beginning in 1961. Sutherland wrote in his thesis that Bolt, Beranek and Newman had a "similar program" and T-Square was developed by Peter Samson and one or more fellow MIT students in 1962, both for the PDP-1.

The Computer History Museum holds program listings for Sketchpad.

Hardware

Sketchpad ran on the MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX-2 (1958) computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which had 64k of 36-bit words. The user drew on the computer monitor screen with the recently invented light pen, which relayed information on its position by computing at what time the light from the scanning cathode-ray tube screen is detected.

To configure the initial position of the light pen, the word INK was displayed on the screen, which, upon tapping, initialised the program with a white cross to continue keeping track of the pen's movement relative to its prior position. Of the 36 bits available to store each display spot in the display file, 20 gave the coordinates of that spot for the display system and the remaining 16 gave the address of the n-component element responsible for adding that spot to display.

The TX-2 was an experimental machine and the hardware changed often (on Wednesdays, according to Sutherland). By 1975, the light pen and the cathode-ray tube with which it had been used had been removed.

Publications

The Sketchpad program was part and parcel of Sutherland's Ph.D. thesis at MIT and peripherally related to th
Computer-Aided Design project
at that time
''Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System''

See also

*Comparison of CAD software

References

Bibliography

* Explains basic Sketchpad principles.
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External links

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{{CAD software

1963 software
Computer graphics
Graphical user interfaces
History of human–computer interaction