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When Computer Graphics Pioneer John Whitney Melted Minds for IBM

Processing was still a long ways off in 1968.

In 1968, when the video below was first published, John Whitney was already a computer graphics pioneer. 10 years earlier, he'd created the iconic, deeply trippy opening sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, arguably the first-ever usage of computer graphics in a movie (but having little to do with what we normally think of as Hollywood CGI circa 2016). Over the next decade he created reels of CG footage for TV shows and commercials, all on an analog computer that Whitney had built himself.

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Then, in 1966, Whitney became IBM's first-ever artist-in-residence. Here he traded his own analog machine for the high-powered digital computers being developed at International Business Machines, largely for/with the US military.

You can check out some more of Whitney's work in this homage at the Creator's Project.