BusinessWeek Logo
Ivan Sutherland's Digital Sketchpad

Sun Microsystems

Ivan Sutherland's Digital Sketchpad

1963

Ivan Sutherland developed the Sketchpad computer program, a predecessor to computer-aided drafting, as part of his PhD thesis at MIT. A pioneer in computer graphics, Sutherland went on to create a head-mounted display—similar to virtual reality glasses—that could create the illusion the viewer was seeing a 3D object.