Kinect's Grandaddy Running On an Apple IIe In 1978 81
An anonymous reader writes "30 years before words like performance capture, augmented reality, or avatars were around — let alone commonplace — experimental film and video artist Tom DeWitt created a system that features aspects of all of them. Pantomation let users interact in real-time with a digital environment and props. It was built using Apple IIe's, analog video gear, and lots of custom hacking and patching. He's currently working on a holographic 3D system that's similarly ahead of its time."
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Tom DeWitt: Star Wars Kid, I am your father.
Star Wars Kid: Noooooooo.
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That was my first thought too. Perhaps it wasn't properly "published"?
Old school memories... (Score:2)
I seem to remember reading something about this in an old National Geographic picture book when I was like... 7. A slightly-overweight kid standing akimbo in front of an old Apple with a representation of him on the screen.
Man, we remember the weirdest, most random things sometimes...
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I believe lots of things fall into that category.
Xerox may have invented the mouse and the concept of on-screen "windows", but these things were widely used on Apple machines before Microsoft had fully sorted out Windows V 1.0. Hell, I think even USB and Firewire are covered by being on an Apple machine before windows and before the iPhone existed.
Say what you will about about Apple, but they have
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"Xerox may have invented the mouse and the concept of on-screen "windows","
It certainly did not. [youtube.com] Why is ignorance of technological history so prevalent????
"Say what you will about about Apple, but they have really been bringing new technology to users for a long time."
No, they haven't. They were lucky to be able to steal/copy/buy the best ideas for a long time.
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Where are my mod points....
Please moderate this as awesome
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It's not. That's the point.
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Apple has better spin doctors in their marketing/PR section.
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"Say what you will about about Apple, but they have really been bringing new technology to users for a long time."
No, they haven't. They were lucky to be able to steal/copy/buy the best ideas for a long time.
The two sentences are not contradictory. It is entirely possible to do both.
Re:The Circle is Complete (Score:5, Informative)
While you are correct, you are grossly undervaluing the work of pioneers at each milestone. No one worked in a vacuum back then.
You would have really earned some "geek points" if you mentioned that Douglas Engelbart was inspired by Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad program from 1963 when he created NLS (what your video link was about). NLS had several modes of operations, but none of them resemble what we have today.
The modern desktop evolved from many years of work and research by pioneers in their field.
1952 - The trackball was invented by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR project.
1963 - The computer mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart and Bill English.
1963 - Ivan Sitherland's Sketch program was created.
1969 - Douglas Engelbart demonstrated NLS (oNLine System)
1970 - David A. Evans created a primitive hypertext-based groupware program that ran on NLS
1972 - Xerox Alto was conceptionalized
1979 - Apple's McIntosh project began.
1982 - Xerox Star was introduced to the market. ($75,000 base + $16,000 for each additional workstation).
1982 - Commodore begins development on the Amiga which was originally intended to be a next-generation game computer. (Jay Miner was originally with Atari).
1983 - Apple markets the Lisa the first GUI based personal computer ($9,995).
1983 - Chase Bishop starts "Interface Manager" and is announced by Microsoft as Windows (after Lisa was released)
1984 - Apple introduced the Macintosh a much more affordable GUI based personal computer ($1,995).
1985 - The Commodore Amiga was released ($1,295)
1985 - The Atari ST was released ($999).
1985 - DRI releases GEM/1
1985 - Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released.
1987 - Microsoft Windows 2.0 was released.
1990 - Microsoft Windows 3.0 was released and Microsoft finally begins its transition from CLI to GUI products.
I know I left some milestones out, but I just wanted to illustrate that the modern desktop was an evolutionary process with many innovations taking place between 1952 and 1984. Of course, Microsoft catches up when all the hard work is finished :P. I'm joking of course. In fact I'll clarify 1990 for them.
1990 - Microsoft Windows 3.0 was released which becomes a significant milestone for GUI on the x86. It may have not been the first, or the best, but it did bring the GUI desktop to the masses. After all with Apple, Xerox, DRI, Commodore, and Atari using GUI, Microsoft had no choice and would have ceased to exist if they hadn't caught up with questionable tactics that led to a settlement with the DOJ in 2001.
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No one worked in a vacuum back then.
Well, except for physics professors [xkcd.com]...
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Might be slightly off here, but that is the general idea.
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> No, they haven't. They were lucky to be able to steal/copy/buy the best ideas for a long time.
You mean *shock* just like MS ?
Q-Dos -> MS-DOS
Spyglass -> Internet Explorer
I could go on, but I'll let you read it for yourself ...
http://www.mcmillan.cx/innovation.html [mcmillan.cx]
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You corect the AC GP mentioned Apple.
Apple is no better (or worse) then MS in this regard. ... OR said another way ...
MS is no better (or worse) then Apple in this regard.
Why people shocked that tech companies buy other tech companies?
Get the point now idiot??
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Say what you will about about Apple, but they have really been bringing existing technology to pretty packaging for a long time.
Fixed that for you. Apple is much more of an evolutionary comapny than a revolutionary one.
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Not quite... Stanford's SRI invented the mouse, led by Douglas Engelbart. His department's funding was severely cut after the Vietnam war, which opened the door for Xerox to poach many of Engelbart's staff, bringing their fancy tech along with them to PARC. Xerox made it popular, and Apple made it famous, but SRI came up with the idea in the first place.
The only thing Apple does "different" is they don't go after the bargain bottom. They recognized that resistive touchscreens were shit, so they used a ca
Re:The Circle is Complete (Score:4, Informative)
>>>something was running on an Apple product before it was on a Microsoft product
LOTS of things first saw the light of day on those old 8-bit machines:
- windows/mouse interfaces (Apple, Atari, Commodore)
- security cameras & alarms run by my Commodore=64
- 128-color porn on Ataris
- music & voice coming from the 1977 Atari console
- full-scale video on my C=64
- ripped music from the radio, or downloaded off the net, playing back on the Commodore SID and Amiga Paula
- and on and on and on.
There's very little that is truly new. Most of it was invented in the late 70s and 80s, but it was not widely adopted until later.
First mouse; first commercial GUI (Score:2)
LOTS of things first saw the light of day on those old 8-bit machines:
- windows/mouse interfaces (Apple, Atari, Commodore)
First? Doug Englebart [wikipedia.org] would like a word with you. And it's generally acknowledged that Xerox PARC [wikipedia.org] (yes, the copier company) pioneered the modern GUI. The Star was a commercial failure because of its price, but it was a real product, and it had all that stuff first. Steve Jobs notoriously took a tour of PARC and borrowed ideas for their own GUIs from them.
Ahead of it's time? (Score:2)
Re:Ahead of it's time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Still, it's impressive that he was doing this on a IIe 5 years before they were released.
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Still, it's impressive that he was doing this on a IIe 5 years before they were released.
Google is your friend. Runs on a PDP-8L computer. Ported to Apple in 1983.
See http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/people/bio.php3?id=208 [experimentaltvcenter.org]
So yeah, another misleading Slashdot story. Nothing to see here. Move along!
Anonymous Reader? (Score:1)
Apple IIe in 1978?! (Score:5, Informative)
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Shhhhh. We're trying to establish prior art benchmarks here.
Hey-- wasn't it 1944?
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Also it seems more reminiscent of the PlayStation video input thingie (chroma key an object)
no, the story is correct (Score:2)
They were using an early version of Apple's Time Machine application.
Can't See Youtube (Score:1)
Is there an alternative link I can use? I want to read about these Apple computers and their interface.
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Love the narration (Score:3)
Reminds me of this other informative early computer related video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IgF6_jVaj8 [youtube.com]
Can't have been a IIe (Score:1)
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Phantomation: Kinect, I am your Father.
Kinect: That's impossible!
Phantomation: Look into your source code, you know it to be true!
Kinect: Nooooooo!!!!!
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Phantomation: Excellent!
Kinect: Excellent.
Phantomation: Wait, did you just say 'excellent' because I said 'excellent?'
Kinect: Uh, no.
Phantomation: Excellent!
Kinect: Excellent.
Amiga -- circa 1985 (Score:4, Interesting)
Later a Canadian/Seattle company called VeryVivid wrote some very beautiful software for that board using the same principles as deWitt demonstrates. You could have birds fly to your hand, play virtual cymbals and drums, and may other effects.
If anybody can locate video of that, I'd love to see it again
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I used to work for Vivid in the 90's, I think I may still have one of their old promo tapes. I'll have to dig it up and post it to Youtube.
The two founders, Francis MacDougall and Vincent John Vincent, now run Gesturetek. [gesturetek.com] There's vids there, and one of the pics is their old soccer game.
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There are examples on YouTube. This one is cool, check out 3:41 when he's manipulating words on the screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8-jGDyhdU8 [youtube.com]
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Awesome. I came to this thread and immediately searched for 'Amiga' because I was hoping someone had that footage archived. I haven't seen it since 1990 or so. Specifically, I saw the sports demo (basketball & hockey, IIRC) with the "pulldown" menus, etc. Very cool stuff.
Can anyone say... (Score:2)
FYI: the Holographic 3D system is for INPUT (Score:3)
Reading his paper [drillamerica.com] reveals that the hologram in use is an interference pattern taken from a live subject, then immediately read into the computer. It is not a 3DTV holo that floats in your living room for you to watch.
Still awesomely cool though. Why did evolution never invent this method to let human vision capture depth more directly?
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link is broken
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Humans (when awake) judge the distance to objects in several ways, including the effort required to focus, binocular parallax, and comparison with nearby objects. I'm saying that if we had a frickin' laser or two attached to our heads, we could use interference fringes too.
Elementary School Field Trip (Score:3)
I remember seeing some of this as part of an elementary school field trip in the late 70's. Maybe to the LA Museum of Modern Art? It was neat, and all, but I wasn't a fan of modern art - even back then.
Not only ahead of its time... (Score:3)
When I clicked on the link my computer spontaneously rebooted. Apparently it's still ahead of my time too.
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When I clicked on the link my computer spontaneously rebooted. Apparently it's still ahead of my time too.
If you're running Windows, that was just Microsoft trying to protect its patents and hide prior art from you...
Also note: (Score:1)
Acorn (of bbc micro fame) productised a comparable thing somewhere in the 90s. Worked pretty well too. Might see if you can revive it through riscos on a beagle board.
Very artful prior art. (Score:1)
I wonder how many patents Mr. Dewitt's activity undermines!
Patently brilliant for it's time. (Score:1)
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Possibly, but remember the Kinect has depth sensing capabilities and has much higher resolution. I am willing to bet the patent(s) applied for by Microsoft incorporate this detail.
original poster here (Score:1)
hey - you're right, it was a II, not at IIe. Like someone pointed out, it was originally developed on the PDP-8 and ported to the Apple II, but I think the significance of it is still pretty apparent. Re: the holographic stuff, that doesn't apply to Pantomation - it's much more current, and believe it or not, much more futuristic, too. I currently work with Tom, and you can check out what we're doing @ www.3dewitt.com
PDP-8, Not Apple II (Score:3)
The mini-computer they talk about in this video is the PDP-8/L [wikipedia.org], not an Apple II, although the system was later ported to Apple II in the early 80s.
It's worth noting that the original Apple II (and most other microcomputers from the early 70s) would have been much more powerful, cheaper, and easier to program than the PDP-8, and the Apple II would have been an excellent choice for a project like this, due to its expandable and well-documented hardware architecture. However, I'm sure they started development of this system well before the original Apple II would have been well known or even available.
Myron Krueger (Score:1)
Another early innovator in this area is Myron Krueger. His installation "videoplace" (1972-1990) was a lot like what Sony's Eyetoy would recreate later.
It was based around a colourful silhouetted video of the user (visually very similar to the iPod commercials). One of the many spectacular things it could do was what it could superimpose a little creature that tried to climb to the top of your head.
To see the climbing creature skip to 3:40 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmmxVA5xhuo
Hope they (did not) tried patenting because.... (Score:1)
Phantomation - well, Pantomation originally (Score:1)