Sito T. Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation

The MIT Press, 2013. — 376 p. — ISBN13: 978-0262528405A behind-the-scenes history of computer graphics, featuring a cast of math nerds, avant-garde artists, cold warriors, hippies, video game players, and studio executives.
Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and PONG. It began in 1963 when an MIT graduate student named Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad, the first true computer animation program. Sutherland noted: «Since motion can be put into Sketchpad drawings, it might be exciting to try making cartoons.» This book, the first full-length history of CG, shows us how Sutherland’s seemingly offhand idea grew into a multibillion dollar industry.
In Moving Innovation, Tom Sito―himself an animator and industry insider for more than thirty years―describes the evolution of CG. His story features a memorable cast of characters―math nerds, avant-garde artists, cold warriors, hippies, video game enthusiasts, and studio executives: disparate types united by a common vision. Sito shows us how fifty years of work by this motley crew made movies like Toy Story and Avatar possible.Film and Television at the Dawn of the Digital Revolution
Analog Dreams: Bohemians, Beatniks, and the Whitneys
Spook Work: The Government and the Military
Academia
Xerox PARC and Corporate Culture
Hackers
Nolan Bushnell and the Games People Play
To Dream the Impossible Dream: The New York Institute of Technology, 1974 – 1986
Motion Picture Visual Effects and Tron
Bob Abel, Whitney-Demos, and the Eighties: The Wild West of CG
Motion Capture: The Uncanny Hybrid
The Cartoon Animation Industry
Pixar
The Conquest of Hollywood