David Alan Smith (born 1957 in

Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune () is a United States military training facility in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Its of beaches make the base a major area for amphibious assault training, and its location between two deep-water ports ( Wilmingt ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

, and CTO of the Croquet Corporation. He has focused on interactive 3D and using 3D as a basis for new user environments and entertainment for over twenty years.

Early career

He began his programming life as a corporate analyst at Thermo Electron Corporation, where he worked to develop an enterprise-wide multi-user multidimensional hierarchical

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cel ...

program in the

APL programming language APL (named after the book ''A Programming Language'') is a programming language developed in the 1960s by Kenneth E. Iverson. Its central datatype is the multidimensional array. It uses a large range of special graphic symbols to represent mos ...

. In 1982, Smith went to work for Richard Greenblatt and Lucia Vaina as a

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

for Softrobotics, an affiliate of

Lisp Machines Lisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture, and in a sense, the ...

, Inc. where he worked to develop an

expert system In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if� ...

for the diagnosis of brain damage using an Apple II as the front end to a

Lisp Machine Lisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture, and in a sense, the ...

. In 1984, he moved back to the Special Projects Laboratory at Thermo Electron to work for Stelianos Pezaris (Sutherland-Pezaris headmount and Pezaris Array Multiplier), where he designed a process control application and helped to design a multiprocessor distributed controller architecture for a robotic PC plating system.

Staff Scientist

Smith then moved to the Thomas Lord Research Center in 1986 as a staff scientist working on intelligent object manipulation using

robotic Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...

tactile sensors, pneumo-elastic and mechanical hands. There he developed a

telepresence Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance or effect of being present via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location. Telepresence requires that the user ...

system using stereo-optics and a

dataglove A wired glove (also called a dataglove or cyberglove) is an input device for human–computer interaction worn like a glove. Various sensor technologies are used to capture physical data such as bending of fingers. Often a motion tracker, such a ...

controlling a Puma-560

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

equipped with the pneumo-elastic hand. Smith has been nominated by the

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It ...

to be one of the

USA Science and Engineering Festival The USA Science & Engineering Festival is a bi-annual science festival held in Washington, D.C. Founded in 2010 by Larry Bock, the festival is the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines in the ...

's Nifty Fifty Speakers who will speak about his work and career to middle and high school students in October 2010.

Interactive Games

In 1987, Smith created '' The Colony,'' the very first 3D

interactive game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedback ...

and precursor to today's

first-person shooters First-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eye ...

. The game was developed for the

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

and soon won the "Best Adventure Game of the Year" award from MacWorld Magazine. In 1989, Smith used the technologies developed for the game to create a virtual set and

virtual camera system In 3D video games, a virtual camera system aims at controlling a camera or a set of cameras to display a view of a 3D virtual world. Camera systems are used in video games where their purpose is to show the action at the best possible angle; m ...

that was used by

James Cameron James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker. A major figure in the post-New Hollywood era, he is considered one of the industry's most innovative filmmakers, regularly pushing the boundaries of cinematic capability w ...

for the movie ''

The Abyss ''The Abyss'' is a 1989 American science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn. When an American submarine sinks in the Caribbean, a US search and recovery team ...

''. Based upon this experience, Smith founded Virtus Corporation in 1990 and developed Virtus Walkthrough, the first real-time 3D design application for

personal computers A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...

. Smith also co-founded several other companies including Red Storm Entertainment with

Tom Clancy Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. (April 12, 1947 – October 1, 2013) was an American novelist. He is best known for his technically detailed espionage and military science, military-science storylines set during and after the Cold War. Seventeen of ...

, Timeline Computer Entertainment with

Michael Crichton John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavily feature tech ...

, and Neomar, a wireless enterprise infrastructure company.

Croquet Project

Smith was one of six principal architects of the

Croquet Project Croquet OS is a web-based operating system for creating three-dimensional apps with multi-user functionalities that run simultaneously on any device. Croquet can be used for communication, online gaming environments such as massively multipla ...

(along with

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) d ...

Julian Lombardi Julian Lombardi (born November 11, 1956) is an American inventor, author, educator, and computer scientist known for his work with socio-computational systems, scalable virtual world technologies, and in the design and deployment of deeply col ...

Andreas Raab Squeak is an object-oriented, class-based, and reflective programming language. It was derived from Smalltalk-80 by a group that included some of Smalltalk-80's original developers, initially at Apple Computer, then at Walt Disney Imagineering, ...

, David P. Reed, and

Mark P. McCahill Mark Perry McCahill (born February 7, 1956) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He has developed and popularized a number of Internet technologies since the late 1980s, including the Gopher protocol, Uniform Resource Locators ( ...

). Development of the Croquet Project moved to the

Open Cobalt Open Cobalt is a free and open-source software platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual worlds both on local area networks or across the Internet, with no need for centralized servers. The technology makes it easy to create deepl ...

project in 2009. He was co-founder Teleplace, Inc. (formerly Qwaq) which was focused on developing Croquet technology into a solution for the

enterprise Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterprise ...

. Teleplace ceased operations in 2011. In 2018, Smith founded the Croquet corporation with other engineers from the project. In 2020, the company raised a seed round, branding its main product, Croquet OS, as "the Operating System for the Open Metaverse".

Other Work

Smith worked at Wearality Corporation on the Virtual World Framework. He is the co-founder of a machine learning company calle
Tanjo.ai
and is also working on creating a strategy game, the early working title of which is "checkers."

References

External links

David A. Smith's blog

at the University of Chicago Magazine (June 1999). Retrieved on 2007-09-18 {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, David A. 1957 births Living people American computer scientists People from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence