WHAT IS A GRAPHICS COMPUTER ANYWAY?

It is a new breed of computer that can draw pictures on the screen of a television in ways up to now never imagined. It is a product that is available to the consumer today for under $1000. It can draw intricate pictures from simple programmed instructions or from pen movements on a special digitizing table. It can make a shape grow from a tiny, hardly visible point to a shape larger than the screen. It can rotate shapes through 64 different angles of a complete circle in a fraction of a second. It can draw in eight different colors. It can draw the floor plan of your house faster than you can blink an eye, or it can just as easily plot the path of an orbiting satellite.

Personal computer graphics is a new activity that has developed around the numerous low-cost personal computers on the market today. Before the appearance of the personal computer there was no computer graphics, or, to be more exact, the buying public had no access to computer graphics. Occasionally we saw computer graphics effects in movies and television commercials. Or perhaps we saw a magazine cover with a computer design. Meanwhile, university and corporate scientists, engineers, and technicians were having all the fun playing with these powerful machines.