Reading #4: Master Sutherland vs. the Machine

Comments:
liwenzhe

Summary:
Ivan Sutherland created a sketch-input system named Sketchpad before even the mouse was being used. Sketchpad is a light pen / giant board of buttons combination that allows users to draw items (known as symbols), and place constraints upon them. The computer stores these constraints and symbols so that their properties and the visual drawings themselves can be reproduced. Users can even add new symbols to the library to use in the future. That's basically the origins of object-oriented programming we are talking about, people! Not to mention GUIs, Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD), and computer graphics in general. The display had some crazy zoom for adding details (Sutherland mentions that a 7 inch section of a 1/4 mile long side), and the reusable nature of symbols, and the fact that information attached to them was retained, allowed Sutherland to show off some impressive examples.

Sutherland does note that in the instance of electrical circuit diagrams the user felt that drawing by hand would be faster. But again thanks to the stored symbol library, once the needed objects were correctly drawn and constrained, even this medium could be expanded upon and prove useful to engineers. A positive example that stands out to me is the bridge idea that he tested. He essentially created a library and set up constraints to handle free body diagrams using Sketchpad. This allowed him to test how different loads and supports would affect members of the truss structure. You're welcome, AutoCAD!

Discussion:

"It is only worthwhile to make drawings on the computer if you get something more out of the drawing than just a drawing."

That quote should be considered by anyone who creates something based on a sketch system. Sutherland himself stresses this in his paper, and sadly it has yet to be accepted as a field standard.

I wonder if Sutherland realized what he was really doing when he designed Sketchpad... did he just create something to get his PhD thesis taken care of? Or did he really set out to revolutionize computer design and capabilities? This paper was awesome. Sutherland is awesome. Man and machine are friends.