Computer animation in 1961: Stanford Card Stunt Program

A short documentary film about the first digital computer program that allowed graphic designers to create raster-based two-dimensional color animations.

At Stanford University in 1961, Larry Breed and Earl Boebert developed the Stanford Card Stunt Program to automate what had been a time-consuming manual process for student volunteers.

Few published histories of computer animation mention this pioneering software.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• computer
• animation
• history
• card
• stunts
• Stanford

[LarryT424]

@Lagaan5041 Thanks for the historical data. I didn't say, and don't think, that Stanford was the first to perform manually-prepared card stunts. Stunts evolved from bi-color hats to bi-color cards to multi-color cards to animated stunts, with different colleges pioneering different advances. In 1961, Stanford was the first to use a computer animation language to prepare stunts. USC used a computer to print the cards, but not until about 1963, and even then, humans had to perform the animation.

[JetpackMedia]

@Lagaan5041 This is about using a computer to help "animate" card stunts. Computers were not used at USC 1925, Stanford 1922, or Cal 1910.

[Lagaan5041]

1st card stunts....

USC 1925

Stanford 1922

Cal 1910

I'm sorry, but you're behind

[jleblang]

Very cool Larry.