[TUHS] Origins of the frame buffer device

[Lawrence Stewart]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>>> The first frame buffers from Evans and Sutherland were at University
>>>> of Utah, DOD SITES and NYIT CGL as I recall.  Circa 1974 to 1978.
>>> 

Other historical datapoints:

I was at MIT ’72-’76 in the Architecture Machine Group (mostly because I was intimidated by the reception desk at LCS).

There were a series of frame buffers during that time, including an 8-bit color mapped one I built in early 1976 for a senior thesis (a color printer).  

I don’t think anyone used them for programming or a GUI.  Instead they were image output devices.  Programming was mostly Imlacs or Tek or ASR33s or IBM 2741s.

The weirdest display was somehow we had a wacky prototype 24-bit machine with a vector display.  One of the scientists loaded a series of short vectors to turn it into a 128x128 raster display.  The thing filled 3 or 4 racks.

-L