Originally published at: A short documentary from 1968 shows first computer animation of people | Boing Boing
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Very cool video, thanks for sharing. Too bad it had the wrong aspect ratio. For those who want to play the video with the correct aspect ratio, I recommend this website: https://www.stretch.site/
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Of course, back then, the soundtrack was just futuristic.
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I know that narrator’s voice (very well) but cannot name him Tempted to say Raymond Baxter, but I think not, on balance. Anyone know?
This is only 5 years later:
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I assume those “Man and His World / Terre des Hommes” titles are from something shown at Expo '67 in Montréal?
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Whoa, FORTRAN IV (or 66 -pretty much the same)…the memories - I studied that at Uni, and even had to work with it in the early 90s.
It was a simulation program (cannot say much more¹), but it also exchanged data with an expert system, a very rudimentary form of AI.
Spaces optional, but fixed formatting. No provision for any real form of structured code, with the exception of CALL/RETURN.
And make sure to punch a sequence number at the end of each card, so if you drop the stack you can sort it easily!
Nitpick: the stage is 1200 units on each side, not 600.
In any case, quite the achievement, though not at the level of the first virtual reality helmet.
Basic concepts there as, e.g., a general computer only sending coordinated to a graphics accelerator, have not really changed, notwithstanding the incredible technological advancements.
¹ I can say one thing:
The second day on the job I was given this 10 cm high concertina stack of code printout, and told to get acquainted with the simulator.
I remember spending at least one hour searching for an array named “buffertwo” or similar, as I had encountered a “bufferone”.
In the end I asked a colleague, and got a resounding laugh as the answer. There was no “buffertwo”, the variable was called like that as it was a very large buffer: in Italian, -one is the suffix to make something bigger: a cat == un gatto, a big cat == un gattone.
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I was impressed by the film recorder. It also processed and displayed the film. And it looked like 35mm. I was expecting 16mm.
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