It is in honor of these achievements that the committee describes him as "the father of computer graphics."Īt a time when punch cards were the norm, the ideas behind Sketchpad were "revolutionary," says the awards committee. It described the Sketchpad program, which showed that computer graphics could provide a more natural interaction between user and machine, and is generally regarded as the predecessor of the graphical interfaces we know today, from the windows system begun by Apple to the icons of our smartphone apps. Sutherland gave notice of his visionary talent with his doctoral thesis, presented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1963 under the supervision of Claude Shannon, the "father" of information theory. Nowadays, "everybody using a computer or smartphone benefits from his vision and contributions." In a career spanning more than six decades, Sutherland has paired "a deep knowledge of technology with an understanding of human behavior to transform computer interaction," the citation continues. Almost sixty years ago, at a time when computers took up an entire room, Sutherland not only invented the first system supporting graphical interaction with these machines, he also developed the first virtual reality headset, which he nicknamed the "Sword of Damocles." The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category has gone in this eleventh edition to American computer engineer Ivan Sutherland, for "pioneering the move from text-based to graphical computer displays," in the words of the citation. Image: Ivan Sutherland, winner of the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies.
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