MIT Science Reporter-"EDM: A Magic Slate" (1962)

Norman Taylor (of ITEK Corp. previously with MIT's LIncoln Lab) demonstrates an innovative electronic drafting machine (EDM) that allows engineers to produce computer-based graphic images using a "light pen." Taylor is interviewed by John Fitch in 1962 as part of the MIT Science Reporter television series presented by MIT and produced by WGBH. Courtesy of the MIT Museum.

[@justrosy5]

Re-watching, 4 years after last time. To my left, my drawing tablet (operates like a drafting tablet of the '90s, but more robust), pen, and glove. To my right, my mouse and my self-built PC, connected to my TV (in front of me, with my smart phone in front of it) via HDMI. Above the TV, on a shelf, two webcams that double as regular video/still cameras. In the room to my back, my laptop and a headset. On the PC, via a browser, ChatGPT and other AI driven tech, plus hoards of free/open-source software that allows me to do anything I can dream up. I'm literally surrounded by the progeny of this magic slate! Bless you, ITEK and MIT!

[@ronaldtartaglia4459]

Not only did they invent this technology that we take for granted, they had the presence of mind to even think about the concept..

[@HansDunkelberg1]

Yes, that's admirable. On the other hand, good ideas are typically simple and plausible enough to come into the minds of several people at once. After this has happened, ambition as well as financial and military interests ensure realization.

[@ronaldtartaglia4459]

R.I.P. John Fitch 🙁

[@romerobryan83]

RIP John

[@ryancraig2795]

Incredible, drag and drop graphical objects, 58 years ago! CAD, natch.

[@justrosy5]

Welcome to the Grandparent of AutoCAD

[@michaelcox5166]

I remember when light pens seemed almost science fictional. Then I grew up a little and learned how they worked. Still pretty magical.

[@b43xoit]

On a DEC GT-40, it caused an interrupt.

[@brianarbenz7206]

This is quite a find! I remember CAD cams being used in high school drafting in 1976, just as I was leaving high school. In 1962, this was so cutting edge, it is exciting to see this, and feel that excitement of breakthroughs.

[@PRH123]

You must have been in quite an advanced high school, in 1982 we had a computer lab with some 8 bit Tandy pc’s with audio cassette program storage. Drafting class was all paper and t squares and pencils.

[@XD-te6vj]

@@PRH123 we were more advanced...apple IIC

[@jaminova_1969]

CAD done with a light pen. Simply amazing! They even figured out how to output prints for production. Not bad for 1962!

[@RagdollRocket]

imagine people in 2020 still being stuck on planet earth^^

[@jarurotetippayachai8220]

Now, iPad with both Apple Pen and AutoCAD App makes our life easier.

[@DANNY40379]

and a couple of years later we were on the moon... yeah sure!

[@msain427]

And to think DARPA, Skunk Works, black projects on average are 30 to 40 years Advance on what has been released to the public. Thinking this way would it be possible that there was already touch screen or any devices that may have been released say in the 90s that they had been

[@minirock000]

@@jarurotetippayachai8220 Apple pen? So a reversion of technology. Let me dig out my old PDA! Pens on touch-screens, may as well use rocks again. Apple's plastic stick hasn't made anyone's life easier. Perhaps it made some fat asswad fatter, that is all.

[@nickandersonco]

I wish I could go back and time and show this person Fusion 360

[@beezertwelvewashingbeard8703]

You just demonstrated the #1 reason that time travel candidates are vetted thoroughly. Your plan will result in catastrophe.

[@drdiamler]

I had no idea this kind of technology existed at this time! What a fantastic video!

[@pixoariz]

Great presenter. I'm surprised at the high quality of the production: these are kinescopes of programs produced on location, live to video, using the large studio cameras of the day.

[@EricIrl]

If you get the frame rates properly synced, kinescope copies can be pretty decent. I have to say that John Fitch does sound like some of the voices you hear on Stan Freberg records.

[@skybluetrades]

Oh, the irony, viewing this on a 24" iMac. Great work MIT and John Fitch for in capturing the very infancy of graphic computing.

[@pearlmax]

I have a 27" imac that paid $10 for just sitting on the floor that I wish were out of my life.

[@TheSteveSteele]

pearlmax If you’re wanting to rid yourself of a 27” iMac I’ll gladly take it off your hands.

[@Tadesan]

John Fitch is awesome. Contrast his technique to any other popular youtube tech channel such as vsauce. I am much much more comfortable with a presenter such as Mr. Fitch.

[@greenbanana311]

He still alive you know. you can purchase a copy of his autobiography on his website at www.fitchfamily.com/Genealogy/books/AutoBio.html

[@BananaTV1978]

@@greenbanana311 Passed away now, RIP. 😥

[@Shadow__X]

@@BananaTV1978 when exactly?

[@BananaTV1978]

@@Shadow__X Sorry to be the breaker of the bad news guys 😥 I wish it wasn't so, especially as I'd hoped to maybe interview John one day.

[@brianarbenz1329]

I love his wise owl look combined with such a friendly and soothing voice.

[@TheWarriorSage1357]

These are amazing videos! I love the content!!!

[@malvinderkaur541]

See what I mean , all of these thoughts came to only few groups whose antennas were open to electromagnetic fields surrounding us and open minds grasping this outpouring of knowledge to make all what we see today

[@peterjansen5498]

Miss Pat Gordon is cute

[@franklindorrell4755]

His directions worked. I found his home

[@marmaly]

Hard to believe they had basic graphic input and manipulation in 1962. Makes it seem like we should be further ahead by now. Perhaps we are.

[@uploadJ]

We had to wait for Gates and the Windows OS for it to hit "the masses" ...

[@thekaiser4333]

No, you wasted all your money, people and time in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. That is why you are stalling.

[@markheller76]

Capture that spot! Say so what or change the world of computing...yep we landed on the Moon

[@greggjohnson621]

I design 3D models on my iPad Pro with Shapr3D and in my VR headset with GravitySketch and Adobe Medium. Then I 3D print those designs and cut plastic and metal parts on my CNC router. And I 3D scan existing parts into those apps with my two Einscan 3D scanners. . But I started with manual drafting and very early AutoCad on an 8088 monochrome PC. AutoCad2, ran on two 5 1/4 floppies. For some commands, you had to swap the disks. We’ve come quite a long way since 1962

[@willl7780]

@@greggjohnson621 you have seen the full spectrum just about lol...

[@Mtlmshr]

To think what has happened in my lifetime 🤯‼️

[@alexandrsoldiernetizen162]

The DEC PDP-1 had a light pen and an almost identical screen in the 1959-1960 timeframe.

[@JustAboutTime]

My current rendering computer is state of the art .. with 2 xRTXA6000’s to which the engineers of the 1960’s would surely feel they are just Alien technology. But .. given a few years, they’ll be as obsolete as the next bit of old tech. It’s amazing to see how the computational power of electronics has increased by orders of magnitudes over what they were 60 years ago. And yet .. those guys were the ones who pioneered it all. If only you would go back in time and poke your head into this interview and say “Just wait till you discover the Clone stamp and healing brushes!”.

[@spikespa5208]

Or just hand them a 2023 tablet.

[@davidholder3207]

I recall seeing this technology being used by the UK Cartography Office at Southampton in 1972 to update maps of England.

[@theJellyjoker]

The birth of the touch interface. If only modern UI has better accessibility options.

[@greenbanana311]

aww, Pat's so sweet, what a cute girl. I wonder what happened to her.

[@ratdad48]

She probably was happily married, had a couple kids a dog, house, white picket fence. Then lived a wonderful Christian life, got old and died. Today she would probably be a knocked up meth head, doing tricks to support her drug habit. Being a general burden on society. Oh well!

[@Gragon]

14:56 went all alien like with calculations

[@Mark16v15]

It's now about 60 years since that technology, and all of us are asking how they were able to even function back then with such limited technology. What takes me about a minute using SolidWorks CAD software, could well have taken them about an hour or more. It makes me wonder what I'm doing right now with technology, that in the year 2083, what will be so further advanced, that people will be asking how we were able to even function at this time with such "limited technology", at least compared to them.

[@b43xoit]

There probably won't be living human beings in 2083.

[@romerobryan83]

I wonder if those were actually the directions to his house

[@PRH123]

So detailed you immediately think they must be :)

[@Mxsmanic]

Before making fun of this, try building the same thing yourself from scratch.

[@DEATHINATOR123]

I wonder what computer they're using for this and how much memory it has available - kind of looks like an old PDP-1

[@TheSteveSteele]

Excellent video. An early example of vector graphics. Does anyone know what the language was called, i.e., like Postscript, PDF, etc..?

[@marknesselhaus4376]

It must come as a shock to much of the current generation ( Post 2000 ) that the tech they have today was being developed back then. Computers today are so much faster and powerful yet the ground work was laid down 60+ years ago. I was 6 years old in 1962.

[@HansDunkelberg1]

The basics of what is shown here were sixty years old likewise, then.

[@marknesselhaus4376]

@@HansDunkelberg1 Very true. My main hobby/research is in descrete logic gates and I make use of information from wayyyy long ago.

[@HansDunkelberg1]

@@marknesselhaus4376 I was thinking of Paul Nipkow (1860-1940), who in 1884 invented his rotating Nipkow disk with (a) spiral(s) of apertures passing across a picture and through this enabling a measurement of light intensities and of a television system. The Nipkow disk was replaced through electronic scanning equipment in the 1930s, but of course, it could only be replaced because it was there. The technology presented in the video has been replaced meanwhile too.

[@HansDunkelberg1]

@@marknesselhaus4376 No, I probably meant someone else with a publication on the electric transmission of images of 1904. Trying to learn his name via Google, I've stumbled over Nipkow. Another such figure would be Arthur Korn (1870-1945), who in 1904 sent an image from Munich to Nuremberg and back to Munich telegraphically.

[@marknesselhaus4376]

@@HansDunkelberg1 OK, that's all good. I have been interested in mechanical television for many years as well but just have not got to the point of trying to make my own. Yes, the history of Nipkow and Korn is fascinating. Also John Logie Baird is also interesting to read about :-)

[@IanSmithKSP]

Wow they had the ability to zoom in and make drawings of higher detail than a human could make. They were so close to unlocking microprocessor etching just with that simple technology.

[@pigpenpete]

Is next week's episode available? Cant go wrong with Sir Patrick

[@Eidelmania]

People sure dressed nice in the early 60's.

[@shirleeeyyy]

The music!! I wonder who and how it was decided to make that the standard futuristic sound

[@shirleeeyyy]

@Norm T Never even thought of that, Thanks …. I see the irony now

[@alexhetherington8028]

It sounds like scratching fingers on a chalkboard.

[@smadaf]

What's always curious to me about this 'futuristic' music from the '60s: 1. It didn't last-probably because it was so discordant and random. 2. It used a lot of harpsichord, pretty 'low tech' and old fashioned.

[@monoamiga]

The use of harpsichord is actually genius IMHO. And it certainly is NOT random at all.

[@maximilianmorse9697]

Is this a similar technology to the old Nintendo light gun?

[@gregobern6084]

Six decades later draftsmen need medication to deal with computer aided dehumanization

[@broct.glover2099]

That's right.

[@RickB50SS]

I trained as a design draftsmsn person in the mid 70s. There is more to it than lines on paper. AutoCad snd Pro Eng and Solid Works followed as computer power grew exponentially and still is as the AI is here now even humans will be redundant. Clever dumb things.

[@msain427]

Not to be mistaken with GHB the magic date

[@mariaparicida9734]

joao qual nome desse equipamento pra mim procura no google

[@literallyshaking8019]

Pat’s a QT

[@1paulgood]

20 years later 3-D modeling…

[@maltronics]

Sat nav 1962

[@romerobryan83]

4:50 google maps

[@MrPiha]

touch screen

[@Mtlmshr]

Well if you time traveled those people to today 🤯that’s what would happen to there heads! When they saw me using this phone!

[@abundantYOUniverse]

He literally described Windows in the first five minutes. The human computer barrier. But only until someone (IBM) had a standardized computer distributed to the masses would it be feasible. And Bill Gates nailed it at the right time. Awesome!

[@minirock000]

She is fit! I like how she bossed around her little man-servant. A smart broad making her way in a man's world.

[@desmonddwyer]

Microsoft paint that's where they got it

[@paulbriggs3072]

And all these year later Microsoft Paint has actually LOST some capabilities, and they send me little survey questions like how satisfied are you with Paint, and then asks me to comment on problems. I then have to tell them some of the most basic problems with the program which apparently they did not know....Or more likely they never cared. So all this is worthless unless the input people give a damn.

[@HermeticallyHermeticThricGreat]

Whos here in 2033

[@msain427]

itech... Iphone potato tomato patatoe

[@newmankidman5763]

Ladies & gentlemen, you have now seen the birth of Photoshop

[@johncooksey79]

Go back in time and show them todays photoshop on a giant 4k screen or an iphone , They would all faint.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

I don't know. 60 years is a pretty long time and I'm sure many could have envisioned even more dramatic developments taking place during that time frame. Such as intergalactic travel, let alone flying cars...

[@msain427]

And this is how computers have been stealing jobs for decades this is nothing new today with self-checkout. Everything used to be done by hand

[@mariaparicida9734]

joao tanbem seria dificil achar pessoas inteligentr como essa hoje em dia

[@garrysekelli6776]

Original CAD software better than this modern crap.

[@James_Bowie]

It seems to be an unwritten rule that all applications have to become bloatware eventually. I guess it makes the software company's programmers feel like they are doing something useful.