Ivan Sutherland's Life And Accomplishments

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Ivan Edward Sutherland was born May 16, 1938 in Hastings, Nebraska, United States. His ancestry is from Scotland and New Zealand, despite his claim that he was named for his mother’s fictitious Russian lover. His father was a practicing engineer with a Ph.D. in civil engineering. His mother was a teacher who engendered in him and his brother Bert a love of learning. In 8th grade he built a gantry crane with surplus motors brought home by his father. His favourite subject in high school was geometry. Sutherland describes himself as a visual thinker (“If I can picture possible solutions, I have a much better chance of finding the right one”), which led to his interest in computer graphics. His first computer processing experience was with a computer …show more content…

Its innovations included hierarchical drawings, constraint-satisfaction methods, and an interactive GUI. When asked, “How could you possibly have done the first interactive graphics program, the first non-procedural programming language, the first object oriented software system, all in one year?” Sutherland replied, “Well, I didn't know it was hard1.” Sketchpad's graceful interaction and functionality continue to inspire admiration among computer graphics professionals. After graduating from MIT in 1963, Sutherland accepted a U.S. Army commission to fulfill his obligation for military service. He was assigned first to the University of Michigan, and then to the National Security Agency as an electrical engineer, mainly because he knew about computers. In 1964, at age 26, First Lieutenant Sutherland replaced J. C. R. Licklider (who returned to private industry) as the head of the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). DARPA was started in response to Sputnik to develop technology for putting a U. S satellite in space. As head of this office Sutherland was given $15 million a year to sponsor computer research, particularly in the areas of timesharing and artificial

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