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Information International Inc.
Information International, Inc., commonly referred to as Triple-I or III, was an early computer technology company. Background The company was founded by Edward Fredkin in 1962 in Maynard, Massachusetts. It then moved (serially) to Santa Monica, Culver City, and Los Angeles California. Triple-I merged with Autologic, Inc. in 1996, becoming Autologic Information International Inc. (AIII). The combined company was purchased by Agfa-Gevaert in 2001. In the early 1960s, Information International Inc. contributed several articles by Ed Fredkin, Malcolm Pivar, and Elaine Gord, and others, in a major book on the programming language LISP and its applications. Triple-I's commercially successful technology was centered around very high precision CRTs, capable of recording to film; which for a while were the publishing industry's gold standard for digital-to-film applications. The company also manufactured film scanners using special cameras fitted with photomultiplier tubes as the imag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Fredkin
Edward Fredkin (October 2, 1934 – June 13, 2023) was an American computer scientist, physicist and businessman who was an early pioneer of digital physics. Fredkin's primary contributions included work on reversible computing and cellular automata. While Konrad Zuse's book, '' Calculating Space'' (1969), mentioned the importance of reversible computation, the Fredkin gate represented the essential breakthrough. In more recent work, he used the term ''digital philosophy'' (DP). During his career, Fredkin was a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at Caltech, a distinguished career professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and a Research Professor of Physics at Boston University. Early life and education Fredkin's mother and father were both Russian-Jewish immigrants who met in Los Angeles, and he was the youngest child of four. His mother was a concert pianist, although she did not perform professionally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foonly
Foonly Inc. was an American computer company formed by Dave Poole in 1976, that produced a series of Digital Equipment Corporation, DEC PDP-10 compatible mainframe computer, mainframe computers. The first and most famous Foonly machine, the F1, was the computer used by Information International, Inc., Triple-I to create some of the computer-generated imagery in the 1982 film ''Tron''. History At the beginning of the 1970s, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) began to study the building of a new computer to replace their DEC PDP-10 KA10, by a far more powerful machine, with a funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This project was named "Super-Foonly", and was developed by a team led by Phil Petit, Jack Holloway, and Dave Poole. The name itself came from FOO NLI, an error message emitted by a PDP-10 assembler at SAIL meaning "FOO is Not a Legal Identifier". In 1974, DARPA cut the funding, and a large part of the team went to Digital Equi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star Wars (film)
''Star Wars'' (later retitled ''Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope'') is a 1977 American Epic film, epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. and released by Twentieth Century-Fox. It is the first film in the ''Star Wars'' franchise and the fourth chronological chapter of the "Skywalker Saga". Set in Universe of Star Wars, a fictional galaxy under the rule of the tyrannical Galactic Empire (Star Wars), Galactic Empire, the film follows a group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance, who aim to destroy the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star. When the rebel leader Princess Leia is captured by the Empire, Luke Skywalker acquires stolen architectural plans of the Death Star and sets out to rescue her while learning the ways of a metaphysical power known as "the Force" from the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The cast includes Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Bak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' is a 1977 American science fiction film, science fiction drama film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François Truffaut. The film depicts the story of Roy Neary, an Everyman, everyday blue-collar worker in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO), and Jillian, a single mother whose three-year-old son was abducted by a UFO. ''Close Encounters'' was a long-cherished project for Spielberg. In late 1973, he developed a deal with Columbia Pictures for a science-fiction film. Though Spielberg received sole credit for the script, he was assisted by Paul Schrader, John Hill (screenwriter), John Hill, David Giler, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins (screenwriter), Matthew Robbins, and Jerry Belson, all of whom contributed to the screenplay in varying degrees. The title is derived from Ufology, Ufologist J. Allen Hyne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Looker
''Looker'' is a 1981 American science fiction thriller film written and directed by Michael Crichton, starring Albert Finney, James Coburn, Susan Dey, and Leigh Taylor-Young. It follows a series of mysterious deaths plaguing female models who have had cosmetic surgery done by a renowned Los Angeles physician. The film explores media, advertising and television's impact on the public in creating a ridiculous standard of beauty. Though sparse in visual effects, it is the first commercial film to attempt to use a computer-generated, three-dimensional, solid-looking model of a whole human body. However, as with its predecessors ''Futureworld'', ''Star Wars'', and '' Alien'', this was an example of "CGI representing CGI", and only depicted on CRT screens in the film, rather than being used as a special effect. The model had no skeletal or facial movements and was not a character. ''Looker'' was also the first film to create three-dimensional (3D) shading with a computer, months ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red's Dream
''Red's Dream'' is a 1987 American animated short film written and directed by John Lasseter and produced by Pixar. The short film, which runs four minutes, stars Red, a unicycle. Propped up in the corner of a bicycle store on a rainy night, Red dreams of a fantasy where it becomes the star of a circus. ''Red's Dream'' was Pixar's second computer-animated short following '' Luxo Jr.'' in 1986, also directed by Lasseter. ''Red's Dream'' is more strongly character driven than ''Luxo Jr.'', Pixar's previous short film. The short was designed to demonstrate new technical innovations in imagery. The short was created by employing the company's own Pixar Image Computer, but the computer's memory limitations led the animation group to abandon it for further projects. Space was growing tight at the company, and as a result, Lasseter and his team worked out of a hallway during production, where Lasseter sometimes slept for days on end. The short film debuted at the annual SIGGRAPH confe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pixar
Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, a segment of the Walt Disney Company. Pixar started in 1979 as part of the Lucasfilm computer division. It was known as the Graphics Group before its spin-off as a corporation in 1986, with funding from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder. Disney announced its acquisition of Pixar in January 2006, and completed it in May 2006. Pixar is best known for its feature films, technologically powered by RenderMan, the company's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan Interface Specification image-rendering API. The studio's mascot is Luxo Jr., a desk lamp from the studio's 1986 short film of the same name. Pixar has produced 28 feature films, wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam Powers, The Juggler
''Adam Powers, The Juggler'' (also known as ''The Juggler'') is a 1981 computer animation created by Richard Taylor and Gary Demos and released by Information International Inc. (Triple I). It was one of the earliest CGI-animated anthropomorphic characters ever. The character was motion captured from Ken Rosenthal, a real juggler. Premise The film opens with a juggler juggling a pack of shapes (circle, square, cones, etc.) and showing the computer animation film the shapes and objects around the scene. As the version included in the DVDs and Blu-rays bonus material is taken straight from one of the company's demo reels, a Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to simply as Mercedes and occasionally as Benz, is a German automotive brand that was founded in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a subsidiary of the Mercedes-Benz Group, established in 2019) is based in Stuttgart, ... logo is seen inside the green ball, which was not in the original short film. The film ends ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Futureworld
''Futureworld'' is a 1976 American science fiction thriller film directed by Richard T. Heffron and written by Mayo Simon and George Schenck. It is a sequel to the 1973 Michael Crichton film '' Westworld'', and is the second installment in the ''Westworld'' franchise. The film stars Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner, Arthur Hill, Stuart Margolin, John Ryan, and Yul Brynner, who makes an appearance in a dream sequence; no other cast member from the original film appears. ''Westworld's'' writer-director, Michael Crichton, and the original studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were not involved in this production. Composer Fred Karlin was retained. The film attempted to take the plot in a different direction from ''Westworld'', but it was not well received by U.S. critics. French critics appreciated the film more, appearing on the list of best science fiction films ever made in '' Demain la Science Fiction.'' It was made by American International Pictures (its predecessor was made by M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Fonda
Peter Henry Fonda (February 23, 1940 – August 16, 2019) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He was a two-time Academy Award nominee, both for acting and screenwriting, and a two-time Golden Globe Award winner for his acting. He was a member of the Fonda acting family, as the son of actor Henry Fonda, the brother of actress and activist Jane Fonda, and the father of actress Bridget Fonda. Fonda began his career on stage, winning a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Theatre World Award for his performance in the play '' Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole''. He became a prominent figure in the counterculture of the 1960s, starring in and co-writing the film '' Easy Rider'' (1969), which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He then made his directorial debut with the Revisionist Western film '' The Hired Hand'' (1971), in which he also starred. During the following decade, he established himself as an action star, appear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Westworld (film)
''Westworld'' is a 1973 American science fiction Western film written and directed by Michael Crichton. The film follows guests visiting an interactive amusement park containing lifelike Android (robot), androids that unexpectedly begin to malfunction. The film stars Yul Brynner as an android in the amusement park, with Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as guests of the park. The film was from an original screenplay by Crichton and was his first theatrical film as director, after one TV film. It was also the first feature film to use digital image processing to pixellate photography to simulate an android point of view.A Brief, Early History of Computer Graphics in Film , Larry Yaeger, August 16, 2002 (last update). Retrieved March 24, 2010 Critical reception was largely positive by contemporary and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feature Film
A feature film or feature-length film (often abbreviated to feature), also called a theatrical film, is a film (Film, motion picture, "movie" or simply “picture”) with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment theatrical program. The term ''feature film'' originally referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that included a short film and often a newsreel. Matinee programs, especially in the United States and Canada, in general, also included cartoons, at least one weekly serial film, serial and, typically, a second feature-length film on weekends. The first narrative feature film was the 70-minute ''The Story of the Kelly Gang'' (1906). Other early feature films include ''Les Misérables (1909 film), Les Misérables'' (1909), ''L'Inferno'', ''Defence of Sevastopol, The Adventures of Pinocchio (1911 film), The Adventures of Pinocchio'' (1911), ''Oliver Twist (1912 American film), Oliver Twist'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
