The first computer drawing was "anti-Soviet" - BBC

American journalist sought out the world’s first image made by a computer. The image of a cathode-ray beauty he shared with “Gazetoy.Ru».

In the 80s of the last century among programmers was very popular compilation of known images of the computer characters (ASCII graphics):

– What a curious reproduction of the “Mona Lisa» …
– What are you, Lyudmila Prokofevna, it’s not a reproduction – it is our computer, Barovsky … programmed.

So the dialogue Ludmila Prokofyevna and Vera from the cult film “Office Romance” Eldar Ryazanov showed possibly one of the first art works of Soviet programmers.

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What was the world’s first image drawn using a computer, found Benjamin Edwards, a journalist of the American edition of The Atlantic. In the mid-fifties, when the first power tube computers were so weak that they needed to build them huge government (mostly military) attachments, a young American officer used a computer for $ 238 million, drawing the first picture using a computer.

on the screen of the cathode-ray tube light from his pen came a naked babe, and the result of this art will be remembered in the history of computer graphics while remaining unknown until recently.

At the dawn of the “cold war”, for fear of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to create a sophisticated computerized air defense system. In collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the IBM-created supercomputer U.S. Air Force SAGE-Semi-Automatic Ground Environment. This project was so ambitious that the scale of funding it was on a par with the Manhattan Project and the program “Apollo».

SAGE system was capable of real-time process data from ground-based radars and to paint a picture of what should and should not be present in American air space at any given time.

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Since 1958, the continental U.S., there are 21 centers SAGE. The heart of each of them was a four-storey bunker with no windows, which housed two massive computer AN/FSQ-7. Each was worth $ 1.89 billion in today’s terms, and has held two thousand square meters.

It was the second prominent in the history of computer technology, capable of delivering information in real time in graphical form. During each day, engineers, service centers, holding one of the computers on, while the second was at the service. In this way, unreliable computers (each of which contained 50,000 vacuum tubes) could monitor the air 100% of the time. On the top floor of each center was installed 91 display – cathode ray tubes, through which staff monitored airspace. These tubes were able to draw an arbitrary line, and symbols anywhere on the screen, for example United States coastline.

to enter information about a new mission statement is induced light pen on the screen and mark appeared on the monitor.

It turned out that one day, along with the important tasks of the defense one of the staff of one of the centers decided to use the computer for entertainment – painted a seductive beauty of a 19-inch screen. This image was photographed at the beginning of 1959 21-year-old ordinary Lorenz Tipton. “One day I decided to take it to future generations to Polaroid” – says Tipton. According to him, the program that displays the beauty, was recorded on a paper punch cards.

program used to diagnose: it runs at startup and shutdown of one another computer, and if a virgin appeared on the screen without distortion, then the transfer is successful, if the same with “glitches” – computer scientists knew that there was a problem.

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journalist interviewed dozens of older programmers Edwards also commemorated the picture. Most likely, the girl was sketched a talented engineer from the page Esquire magazine, 1956 or 1955. In those years, these pictures for the magazine drew the famous artist George Pitti. One of these girls, published in the December issue of 1956, in the form of exactly the same as the beauty of the computer.

«I found this picture on the website of the museum of computer equipment SMECC. It was placed there, and no one understood its value, until I came across it – told a journalist, “the Newspaper”. – Then, I interviewed dozens of veterans of Project SAGE, to find out who took the picture. So I found Lorentz Tipton, who sent this picture to the museum many years ago. I am not aware of any successful application of SAGE against Soviet aircraft. I just believe that the Soviets would never have attempted to bomb the U.S., so that the system served as a measure of deterrence more ».