In 1962, designer William Fetter was attempting to devise a new process in order to maximize the efficiency of the layout inside Boeing's airplane cockpits. His final product was a computer generated orthographic views of human forms. These works are among the first computer drawings which emerged from a strictly technical problem— the most efficient design of an aeroplane cockpit. In 1960 William Fetter devised the term 'computer graphics' to describe his creation, starting a chain of events that would eventually revolutionize the world of entertainment, advertising and media.
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Fetter of the Boeing Company in Seattle used mechanical analogue plotting systems to animated films for visualizing pilot and cockpit configurations in aircraft design and Cockpit Simulation of human factor plotter drawings in 3D computer animation. Called "First Man," a digital human placed in a digital cockpit so that design engineers can see if his hands reach the controls. Fetter prepared a program, with whose assistance plotter designs could be made by a "people model" in a cockpit. The program made the illustration and the different positions of the people model from different lines of sight for the space situation possible in the cockpit. |
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| 1962 Series of 3D computer movements. |
| The analogue plotter is quite useful in industrial and scientific engineering, architectural design, systems analysis, and so forth, it is rather obsolete in the production of aesthetically-motivated computer films. It can and is used to make animated films but is best suited for still drawings. The digital-to-analogue conversion, coded signals from a computer drive an armlike servomechanism that literally draws pen or pencil lines on flatbed or drum carriages. The resulting flow charts, graphs, isometric renderings, or realist images are incrementally precise but are too expensive and time-consuming for non-scientific movie purposes. |
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| Orthomat plotter. |
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The figure of the pilot was programmed in such a way that all possible positions which accord with his bodily proportions could be represented. For queueing theory studies, however, 30 straight-line connected points defined the figure in a block form, and the lines represented the right-angle block edges. These figures were moved down the aisles of simulated commercial aircraft to predict passenger movement. Although these works had strictly scientific purposes in the first place, their aesthetic aspects were so striking that they have always been seen in the context of computer art. Through this work they succeeded in focusing attention on the abundant possibilities inherent in the computer to aid pictorial modifications— abstractions, successive de-structuring, etc. Their methods brought them close to picture processing, the goal of which is slanted toward real forms. |
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| 1962 A computer drawing by William Fetter. |
| Later in 1970, Fetter left Seattle to work in Los Angeles, where he created one of the first in-perspective computer graphics TV commercials, a commercial for Norelco. Through an agreement with the Boeing Company and Computer Graphics, Inc., Fetter used his First Man data for a 30-second television commercial at Graphcomp Sciences Corporation for Norel. co. Modifications made to the figure database for this purpose included approximately sound-synchronos lip motion as the figure spoke. Possibly the first commercial to make use of computer graphics perspective, it achieved high prime-time ratings. While simpler in appearance, the "Second Man" series-representing the second stage of this work-improved the articulation of the First Man figure by incorporating a greater number of joints and continuing to develop its anthropometric accuracy. |
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| 1970 William Fetter's TV Commercial". |
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In a 1978 interview Fetter stated, that there had been a long-standing need in certain computer graphics applications for human figure simulations, that as descriptions of the human body are both accurate and at the same time adaptable to different user environment. His early work at Boeing was focused on the development of such ergonomic descriptions. One of the most memorable and iconic images of the early history of computer graphics was such a human figure, often referred to as the "Boeing Man", but referred to by Fetter as the "First Man". Fetter later moved to Carbondale, Illinois to become the Southern Illinois University Design Department Chairman, working with Buckminster Fuller. Fetter died in 2002. |
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| Boeing 747 cockpit studies (1968). |
Related Papers:
W. A. Fetter, "Computer Graphics, Aircraft Applications:' Document No. D3-424-I, Boeing Airplane Company, Wichita Division, 1961.
Fetter WA (1964) Computer Graphics in Communication, McGraw-Hill Book Co, New York.
Fetter, W. A. (1980), Computer Graphics Human Figure Application Of Biostereometrics. Computer-Aided Design 12, 175-179.
Fetter WA (1981) Wide-Angle Displays for Tactical Situations, Proc. US Army Third Computer Graphics Workshop, pp.99-103
Fetter WA (1982) A Progression of Human Figures Simulated by Computer Graphics, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 2, No9, pp.9-13
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