[comp.graphics] Computer graphics history

posdamer@wucs2.UUCP (02/19/87)

The infamous mandrill picture has been around for a long time. I know that
the first uses of it that I am aware of were as a demo for Comtal. I seem to
remember it beaing attributed to Harry Andrews, although the source is lost
in the fog and I am not sure I believed it at the time. Does anyone out
there KNOW (not guess or speculate) where, when and who digitized the
mandrill.

			Thanks
			Jeff Posdamer
			...!{ihnp4,seismo}!wucs!wucs2!posdamer

ksbooth@watcgl.UUCP (02/21/87)

Jeff Posdamer inquired about the origins of the mandrill image.  It is
distributed on a mag tape supplied originally by USC (University of Southern
California).  Harry Andrews was a faculty member there at the time.  He also
founded (or co-founded) Comtal.  The actual digitization was presumably
done by an anonymous graduate student.

A related fact:  Another image on the tape shows a woman wearing a hat.
This was the basis for the poster that appeared at SIGGRAPH '86 as the
winner of the Raster Technology contest.  The original source of the
image is a Playboy centerfold.  A recent issue of Playboy contains a
recap of all centerfolds.  (One of our graduate students told me this.  He
also managed to locate a back issue of the original, which has been
digitized.)

wallis@weitek.UUCP (02/24/87)

>in the fog and I am not sure I believed it at the time. Does anyone out
>there KNOW (not guess or speculate) where, when and who digitized the
>mandrill.


That was me and a fellow named and Mark Sanders, some time back in the early
70s.  I was one Bill Pratt's graduate students, and we scanned the monkey off
the back page of a photography magazine, I think it was a advertisement for a
Graphlex camera. We used a Muirhead drum scanner which was originally designed
for use with a fax machine. The display we had was made by John Tahl when he
was at Aerojet (the refresh memory was a magnetic drum).  He later started his
own company (Comtal), and adopted the mandrill image as sort of a logo.  Harry
Andrews ensured the image's immortality by including it among the standard USC
test images that have ended up everywhere.

Mark Sanders died in about 1975.

Bob Wallis

UUCP: {pyramid,turtlevax,cae780}!weitek!wallis