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Retrospective Retrospective THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GRAPHICS PEOPLE OF THE LAST MILLENNIUM THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GRAPHICS PEOPLE OF THE LAST MILLENNIUM The Graphics Industry: Evolution and Revolution The Graphics Industry: Evolution and Revolution JAN/FEB 2000 $7.95

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Page 1: Retrospective · — “xerography”). The 914 copier would send com-pany net profits soaring, from $2 million in 1959 to $22.6 million in 1963. And of course in 1961, with the hugely

RetrospectiveRetrospectiveTHE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GRAPHICS PEOPLE OF THE LAST MILLENNIUMTHE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GRAPHICS PEOPLE OF THE LAST MILLENNIUMThe Graphics Industry: Evolution and RevolutionThe Graphics Industry: Evolution and Revolution

JAN/FEB 2000 $7.95

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24 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

IN THE EARLY 1890S, THE

struggling publisher of asmall American magazinedesperately needed to find away to increase his revenuein order to stay in business.

It was a period of techno-logical innovation in printingand publishing. High speedrotary presses had revolu-tionized print productivity. Anew machine for automatingtypesetting had just been in-troduced. And photographywas now available to anyonethrough the recently intro-duced Kodak camera.

But news had also spreadabout a new technology forprint preparation that prom-ised to liberate publishersfrom the restrictions and costof wood engravings for illus-trations. The process wascalled the “crossline half-

tone”, devised by an ex-Cornell University photographer. Accord-ing to what publisher Frank Munsey heard, this new halftoningmethod would make it possible to print not just in black and whitebut also with a multitude of shades of grey, achieving the samephotorealistic effect from a press that photographic printing hadoffered for over half a century.

Frank Munsey had a vision. By gambling on this new thoughunproven technology, he saw an opportunity to set MUNSEY’S MAG-AZINE apart from every other publication on the market.

In 1893, the first magazine to be illustrated entirely using pho-tomechanical reproduction hit the streets. It was an immediate suc-cess, and within only four months, advertisers were flocking tobuy space and the circulation of MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE had grownfrom 20,000 to 200,000. By 1900, MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE had morereaders than any publication in the world.

***IN JULY, 1944, A PERIODICAL CALLED THE RADIO NEWS PUB-lished an article on a new dry reproduction method, invented by aQueens, New York physicist. It was called “electrophotography”.

The issue came and went, drawing little attention, until twoyears later, when the research head of a small photographic supplyhouse in Rochester, NY happened to run across it. John Dessauerread about this electrophotographic process with great interest,and decided to share it with the companypresident, Joseph Wilson.

Wilson had just succeeded his fa-ther as president of the Haloid Com-pany, founded in 1906. But WorldWar II had just ended and the com-pany now found itself with an ever-shrinking share of the photo papermarket. Worse yet, there was nothing

From MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE, January, 1894 —an early example of halftone printing. Frank

Munsey gambled that this new technologywould save his failing publication — and

wound up setting off a publishing revolution.

Joseph Wilson, president of the HaloidCompany of Rochester, NY, riskedall his company’s fortunes on anew printing technology called

“electrophotography”.

THE STORY BEHIND THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GRAPHICS PEOPLE OF THE LAST MILLENNIUM

RetrosT H E G R A P H I C S I N

Evolution andRevolution

BY DAN BRILL AND RON GIDDINGS

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on the horizon to replace lost sales. Wilson knew it was time tofind a new idea — or see Haloid dwindle away to nothing.

Electrophotography research and development had been un-derway at Batelle Memorial Institute since 1944 when Batelle hadsigned a royalty-sharing agreement with its inventor, Chester Carl-son. However all attempts to interest the corporate world in mar-keting the product had failed. So when Joseph Wilson and JohnDessauer came calling in 1946, Batelle was more than happy to of-fer them an exclusive licensing agreement.

For Wilson, it was a huge gamble. Haloid’s total net earnings in1946 would total only $101,000 on sales of $6.5 million. For

Haloid, this was literallymake it or break it.

It would take anothertwelve years, and an addi-tional $12.5 million in de-velopment funds, but in1959 the Haloid Companywould finally introducethe 914 copier, the first of-fice machine based on therevolutionary new processof electrophotography(better known under thename chosen by Wilson— “xerography”). The 914copier would send com-pany net profits soaring,

from $2 million in 1959 to $22.6 million in 1963.And of course in 1961, with the hugely suc-

cessful launch of its new product, Haloid wouldchange its name to “Xerox”.

INSPIRATION AND ENABLEMENTThe evolutionary process may be changed by fate, by

nature, even by divine intervention — but when human beings areinvolved, change is the product of two fundamental elements: in-spiration and enablement.

Someone must have a concept, an idea they believe is so greatthat, if necessary, they’re willing to risk everything they have andwhatever time it takes to see it through to its fruition.

Often that’s not enough, and someone else must make the con-cept a reality, to enable its completion — more often than not withmoney, sometimes through making the right connections, some-times by providing one critical missing ingredient — a key piece ofinformation, for instance — that nudges that concept from failureto success, from rejection to acceptance.

Evolutionary change happens in increments. Occasionally,

GRAPHIC EXCHANGE 25

pectiveD U S T R Y

Johannes Gutenberg has been named one of the mostimportant people of all time by historians and experts in morethan one international poll, including a recent BIOGRAPHY

television special, which picked him as the “Most InfluentialPerson of the Millennium”, and TIME Magazine, which

selected him “Person of the Century”.However, if the invention of the printing press leads

the list of events which most influenced societyas a whole, it begs the question: Who would

follow Gutenberg on a list of individualswho most influenced the evolution of

graphics? In this special feature, weprovide a digest of important

names and events in thehistory of graphics —

along with our choicesfor the 100 people

who we feel mostinfluenced theevolution of theindustry.

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26 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

however, an invention or discovery is of such magnitude that itwarrants the description “revolutionary”. But, just as JohannesGutenberg could never have predicted how the printing presswould alter the fabric of society the way it did, so it is that inven-tors or agents of change rarely foresee the revolutionary effect thattheir contribution will have.

Frank Munsey fought for success as a magazine publisher untilhe conceived the idea of harnessing halftone technology to pro-duce a publication that revolutionized the publishing industry.Joseph Wilson rescued his failing photo supply business by gam-bling on an unknown process called electrophotography to launchthe Xerox copier. The graphics industry overflows with stories likethese, not all of them as spectacular as Munsey’s or Wilson’s, butevery one compelling nonetheless.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF MODERN GRAPHICS There was a time when all of us in graphics lived in our own

insulated vertical worlds. Printing, publishing, art, photography,design, science — each stood apart, each separate.

Digital technologies changed the machinery of each of thesebusinesses; then the desktop revolution changed the businessmodel itself.

When we discuss the graphics industry in these pages, it is withthe underlying understanding that all these fields are now joinedtogether under one single banner. Where once graphic arts — thecommercial printing industry — was separated from graphic com-munications — commercial art, design, photography and publish-ing — now it is part of one unified business model that also in-cludes the rising star of the Internet. (Did you know that, accord-ing to a recent TrendWatch survey in the U.S., the number oneinvestment by graphic arts companies is in Macintosh computers?)

“GRAPHICS” AND THE MEASURE OF INFLUENCESifting through hundreds of years worth of background infor-

mation on printing, publishing, art, design, photography and com-puting to come up with a comprehensive and creditable list of thetop 100 most influential graphics people is a daunting task.

We pored over a myriad of histories, biographies and industryresources, scouring for names and achievements we might haveoverlooked. We invited your response through our online surveyat www.gxo.com. We e-mailed questionnaires to as many influen-

95PAUL RAND20TH C AMERICAN GRAPHIC DESIGNERThroughout his long and distinguished career, PaulRand remained at the forefront of the American graphicdesign scene, serving as art director for top magazinessuch as Esquire and Apparel Arts (later renamedGentleman’s Quarterly) and developing corporateidentities for a long list of major U.S. corporations. Theelegant simplicity of his designs may be seen still in thelogos he created for Westinghouse, UPS, ABC, NextComputer, Yale University, Cummins Engine, and IBM.

100DAN BRICKLIN20TH C AMERICAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERDan Bricklin created VisiCalc, the world’s first desk-top spreadsheet software. Released in 1979 for theApple II, it created hundreds of millions of dollarsin revenue for both VisiCorp and Apple. But Brick-lin never patented his application and failed to reapthe full financial rewards which came with its suc-cess — ironic, considering that he was a HarvardMBA. In 1984 VisiCalc demonstrated its VisiOn op-erating system, the first GUI OS for PC, drivingGates into full scale development on Windows.

99BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 18TH C AMERICAN PRINTER/STATESMANStatesman, philosopher, scientist, inventor — butbefore any of these, Benjamin Franklin was aprinter and publisher, apprenticed in graphic artsfrom the age of 12. As the innovative publisher ofthe Pennsylvania Gazette and “Poor Richard’s Al-manack” (starting in 1728) prior to his ground-breaking experiments with electricity and leader-ship role in shaping the American Declaration ofIndependence, Franklin is also credited with pub-lishing the first political cartoon (“Join or Die”).

98JULIA MARGARET CAMERON 19TH C BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHERUnquestionably a pioneer in her field, JuliaMargaret Cameron took up photography late in lifeas a hobby; by the time she died in 1879 she hadestablished herself as one of the most respectedportrait photographers of her day, capturingtimeless studies of many well-knowncontemporaries such as John Herschel, HenryTaylor, Holman Hunt, Alfred Tennyson and VictorHugo. She was also one of the first to experimentwith soft focuses and dramatic portraiture.

97WILLIAM BULLOCK19TH C AMERICAN INVENTORThe invention by William Bullock of Philadelphiain 1863 of the web-fed rotary printing press, amachine which could print from paper in rollsrather than sheets and capable of producing anastonishing 10,000 impressions per hour with onlythree pressmen, transformed newspaper massproduction and distribution almost overnight.

96KAI KRAUSE20TH C GERMAN DIGITAL ARTISTAn acknowledged leader in digital art, Kai Krausehas left his unmistakable signature on theinterface designs of a wide range of desktopcreative imaging applications, including Kai’sPowerTools and Bryce, as well as being an earlyproponent of new imaging technologies such asLivePicture. It was also Krause more than anyother who brought Mandelbrot’s fractals into themainstream consciousness and his influence ondigital imaging continues to be felt today.

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GRAPHIC EXCHANGE 27

tial industry people as we could find. In the end, we know our listis at best subjective, at worst biased; at best a fair representation,at worst incomplete.

We accumulated hundreds of nominees, sorting them by specif-ic field, by general industry, and by era. The standard for gauginginfluence centred on our definition of graphics — the creation andproduction of pages using words and pictures in a commercialcontext, the product of graphic communications and graphic arts.

We took a generalized approach to appraising the names onour list. How broad is their influence? Is it industry-specific? If so,how dominant is it within that industry? Over what period of time?How relevant is it on the industry today? How different wouldgraphics be without their contribution or achievement?

The overwhelmingly dominant form for the distribution ofpages throughout most of history has been print, and our effectivestarting point was Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type; thusprinting and publishing is well-represented on our list.

The creative elements which make up the content from whichgraphics are produced — design, photography, art and illustration— are also represented, but we avoided getting immersed in de-bates about the greatest artists or photographers or designers of alltime. Instead we focused on those who we felt were the primemovers in influencing either our general esthetic and artistic con-sciousness or styles and trends in commercial art.

Current influence was very important. We looked first at howimportant an invention or achievement was in relation to the waygraphics are produced today, and discounted the value of anywhich are now obsolete or of marginal use. This tended to skewour results slightly more in favour of digital technologies and cur-rent design trends. However we disregarded many importantnames in the history of computer development, unless their contri-bution had a direct bearing on the graphics industry or could beidentified as a seminal event.

We looked for direct impact; influencing someone who hadgreat influence was not necessarily enough to qualify for inclusion.

Our perspective also leaned heavily toward the evolution ofgraphics in Western Europe and North America.

WHAT ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OF THE INTERNET?Inevitably we had to grapple with the question of web graphics

and its impact on the graphics industry. Is there any doubt that the

web has opened up a new dimension for graphic communicationson a scale that potentially dwarfs even printing?

However the web is so new that it seemed almost presumptu-ous to think that we could make an intelligent comparison of itsinfluence with over six hundred years of history going back toGutenberg (or to put it into perspective, remember that the webhas been a force to reckon with for barely half of one per cent ofthe last millennium). Also, its commercial value to the graphics in-dustry, although growing exponentially, has yet to be accuratelydetermined. The force of the Internet lies in its power as a techno-logical phenomenon, but unlike traditional graphics, it is difficultto pinpoint its evolution through specific individuals (with the ex-ception of number 21 on our list, Tim Berners-Lee).

Thus you will not find any web designers or web software de-velopers in our top 100 (although such folks as Marc Andreesen,Eric Bina, Jim Clark, Steve Case, Lynda Weinman, Loerner and Bo-sack, Crocker, Kahn and Cerf, Taylor and Roberts, and LeonardKleinrock were on our list of honourable mentions).

So let us take a whirlwind journey back through the last millen-nium as we count down the 100 individuals we have selectedacross our eight fields of commercial graphics and let’s seewhether we can play “connect the dots”. (Numbers are color cod-ed by the four major industry descriptions: Graphic Arts, Comput-ing, Art & Design, and Imaging & Science).

It all started with Gutenberg, a converted wine press, and anidea for making letter punches out of lead…

93VOLNEY PALMER19TH C AMERICAN ADVERTISING INDUSTRY LEADERThe advertising agency was the brainchild of VolneyPalmer, who opened the first agency in the U.S. in1842 and quickly built a near-monopoly on adplacement across the country. It was Palmer whofirst enabled advertisers to mount nationaladvertising campaigns, at the same time winningthe support of publishers by relieving them of theburden of individually selling ad space.

94WILLIAM MORRIS19TH C BRITISH PRINTER/PUBLISHERA negative effect of the Industrial Revolution of the19th century was the deterioration of production valuesin printing and publishing. William Morris, leader of theArts and Crafts movement in Britain and founder of theKelmscott Press, was a major force in the latter part ofthe century in proselytizing the restoration of highquality standards in the graphic arts industry.

PRINTING (18)

PUBLISHING (9) DESIGN (9)

ART &ILLUSTRATION

(16)

PHOTOGRAPHY(13)

COLOR SCIENCE (8)

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

(9)

DESKTOP (18)

The division of our Top 100 by field of endeavour ranged from 18 in bothprinting and desktop publishing to eight in color science. Almost half arefrom the United States; Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy account-ed for 16, 15, 13 and three respectively, with six from other countries.

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28 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

AS ANYONE IN THE CIVILIZED WORLD PROBABLY

knows, the printing press was invented in Europein the 15th century.

But what not many people know is that theman responsible for building the first press wasprobably not Johannes Gutenberg, but a Dutchmanby the name of Lourens Coster, who is reported to

have constructed his machine several decadesbefore Gutenberg. Unfortunately, Coster’s

press was somewhat crude, lacking the vi-tal component which made Gutenberg fa-mous, moveable metal type.

Even the invention of moveable typewould not have guaranteed Gutenberg hisplace in history if not for the fact that PiSheng was born not in Europe but in Chi-na (where the first language was, not sur-prisingly, Chinese). Pi Sheng is credited

with having created moveable type around 1045 — but since theChinese alphabet had thousands of characters, his invention didnot prove to be terri-bly practical and wasquickly forgotten (atleast until 1313, whenan ambitious fellownamed Wang Chenprinted his Treatise ofAgriculture using over60,000 Chinese hard-wood characters).

FROM MAYHEM TO MEZZOTINTSSo it was that printing sprung up in Mainz, Gutenberg’s home

town. And who knows how long it would have remained centredthere if not for the Archbishop of Nassau, who decided that print-ing was not in the best interests of the Church. But by sending hissoldiers into Mainz in 1462 to destroy the town, the Archbishopforced the printers to flee, taking their new-found skills with themand hastening the spread of printing throughout Europe.

Another of printing history’s great untold stories is that of amasterful but unidentified English engraver whose superb decora-tive designs lifted late 15th century printing to an art, but who to-day is simply known as Master E.S.

However we do know that “Edelstein”, the first illustrated bookcombining type and wood engravings, was printed in 1461 by oneof Gutenberg’s German contemporaries, Albrecht Pfister. We are

also familiar with the efforts of other 15th and 16th century masterprinters such as Italians Antonio Blado and Wendelin da Spira, aswell as England’s first printer, the entrepreneurial and talentedWilliam Caxton, who printed the first book in England in 1477.

Yet it wasn’t until 1620 that another significant development inpress technology occurred when Willem Blaeu of Holland cameup with the idea of adapting a standard wooden press to accept aspring and suspended platen.

Meanwhile, in the United States, there was no printing industryat all until Stephen Daye was recruited to operate the first press in1639 (although the first press in the New World was set up in Mex-ico City about 100 years earlier). Daye handed it off to SamuelGreen, who became the first American master printer.

Just about the time Daye was starting up, a German soldiernamed Ludwig von Siegen invented mezzotint engraving, whichalmost 400 years later could be identified as the first variation onstochastic screening. Mezzotint engraving became immensely pop-ular in England through its introduction by Prince Rupert, nephewof Charles I, a friend of vonSiegen’s.

Yet in the first 350 years ofprinting history, technologicaladvances were few and farbetween, despite Jean-Bap-tiste Le Prince’s invention ofaquatints and Jacques-Christophe (Jakob) Le Blon’sstupendous development ofthe three-color mezzotint in1719. Gutenberg’s letterpressremained essentially thesame, and it wasn’t until theearly 1800s that the face ofprinting began to change dra-matically.

THE 19TH CENTURY — PRINTING POWERS UPWhen in 1811 Frederich Koenig built the first steam-powered

cylinder press, the graphic arts industry discovered the IndustrialRevolution. About the same time, Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier per-fected their “fourdrinier” paper roll machine (which had actuallybeen invented by Nicholas-Louis Robert in 1798) — although cred-it for making the Fourdriniers’ machine work properly should intruth go to their chief mechanical engineer, Bryan Donkin.Nonetheless, feeding paper through a press from rolls delivered asubstantial increase in productivity over handling sheets.

Lourens Coster of Holland) mayhave built a press several decades

before Gutenberg, but Guten-berg beat him to the punch — of

moveable type, that is.

This famous portrait of Louis XVwas printed using the three-colormezzotint technique invented by

Jakob Le Blon in 1719.

15th century punch and matrix

PrintingFROM MOVEABLE TYPETO LASER BEAMS

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GRAPHIC EXCHANGE 29

William Bullock patented the rotaryweb-fed press in 1863. Richard Hoepatented his first rotary press in 1846and perfected the continuous roll pressin 1871. The printing process was trans-formed into a mass production process.

But one of the most important dis-coveries in printing was largely ignored for most of this century.

In 1796 a Bavarian named Alois Senefelder had, by chance, dis-covered the principles of lithography (literally“writing on stone”), based on the fact that waterand grease don’t mix. This technological break-through provided the groundwork for modernoffset printing.

Ironically, Senefelder’s invention was moti-vated by his difficulty in finding a publisher forhis dramatic writings, prompting him to experi-ment with etchings and copper plates until hediscovered that a greasy composition of soap,wax and lamp black on limestone eliminatedthe need to etch. Between 1796 and 1818 Senefelder refined hislithographic process. He published a complete description of li-thography (which he called “chemical printing”) in 1818 (“Voll-standiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckery”), after which the techniquequickly spread to England, Italy, and France.

Although artists were quick to capitalize on this new reproduc-tion method for limited press runs using stones as imaging“plates”, it wasn’t until George Sigl of Vienna adapted his litho-graphic press in 1875 to allow offset printing on tin that lithogra-phy’s potential began to be realized. When in 1904 Ira Rubel fig-ured out the mechanics of transferring an image from metal plates(which had just become widely available) to a rubber blanket topaper, modern offset printing was officially born.

Meanwhile, let us record a couple of other 19th century histori-cal notes worth mentioning. In 1856, a fellow named AndreasHamm teamed up with another German named Andreas Albert(who had just finished apprenticing with a press builder) andlaunched a small press manufacturing business in Frankenthal,Germany. After his death, the company would be sold, relocated afew miles away to a town called Heidelberg, and renamed Heidel-berger Druckmaschinen.

In 1864, a pressman in the Western United States, anxious to

Senefelder builthis original stonelithographic pressfrom wood in1797.

In 1620, 170 years after Gutenberg,WillemBlaeu of Holland introduced the first majorimprovement to the original press design— adding a suspended platen and a spring.

92KONRAD ZUSE20TH C GERMAN INVENTORIf not for World War II, Konrad Zuse would haveachieved worldwide recognition for his pioneeringwork in building one of the world’s first binaryelectromechanical computers, the Z1. Despitelosing his early inventions in wartime bombingraids, Zuse persevered and by the end of the warhad completed the Z4, a more sophisticatedversion of his pre-war prototype.

91 JONATHAN SEYBOLD20TH C AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY LEADERFrom its humble beginnings in the late 1970s,Seybold Seminars and Exposition has grown to bethe world’s largest and most prestigious event forthe digital publishing market. Founder and digitalpublishing guru Jonathan Seybold has beeninfluencing the developers of modern graphicstechnologies for the past thirty years; today theSeybold seminars and exposition are held twice ayear, one in Boston and the other in San Francisco.

90GASPARD-FELIX TOURNACHON(NADAR)19TH C FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHERIn 1858 Nadar became the first to take picturesfrom the air, using his own specially constructedhot air balloon completely equipped with its owndarkroom. Flamboyant, dramatic, creative, his pho-tographs of famous people include Emile Zola,Rossini, Liszt, Balzac, and his friend Victor Hugoon his deathbed — as well as George Eastman (re-produced in this issue).

89WILLIAM BERNBACH20TH C AMERICAN ADVERTISING INDUSTRY LEADERWilliam Bernbach, co-founder of the Doyle, Dane,Bernbach advertising agency, left his mark on mod-ern commercial design in the 1950s and 1960swith his brilliant graphic treatments in ads for nu-merous major accounts, beginning with Orbach’s de-partment stores and continuing with Volkswagen (in-cluding the famous Think Small. and Lemon. ads),Avis (When You’re Only No.2, You Try Harder.) andCalvert’s. Bernbach demonstrated above all else thatwith judicious use of white space, less is more.

88MICHAEL COWPLAND20TH C CANADIAN TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPERPage layout in the Wintel world was revolutionizedin 1989 by the introduction of CorelDRAW, an all-in-one layout and illustration package that gave PCusers the ability to create type and manipulategraphics like no application before it. CorelCorporation, founded in 1985 by MichaelCowpland, continues to set the standard for PC-based page assembly and design. Over the yearsthe company has added imaging and wordprocessing software to its portfolio.

PHOTO COURTESY COREL CORPORATION

PHOTO COURTESY SEYBOLD SEMINARS

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secure his sons’ employment, started up a printing company whichhe named after himself. The firm that Richard Robert Donnelleybegan, R. R. Donnelley and Sons, would grow to become theworld’s largest printer.

And in 1884, Albert Dick, with help from Thomas Edison, de-veloped a machine for making copies which he labelled themimeograph. The A.B. Dick Company would be a leader in thepost-WWII introduction of small offset printing.

TYPEFOUNDERS MAKE THEIR POINTDevelopments in standardizing type followed their own course.

In 1737 French typefounder Pierre-Simon Fournier was the first topropose standardizing type sizes with a point system, followed

barely twenty yearslater by Ambroise Di-dot and his conceptof typographical pointmeasurements.

But in the end, thestandard point wasset by neither Four-nier nor Didot, but bya little known Ameri-can named NelsonHawks. Hawks man-aged the Pacific TypeFoundry, which wasowned by John Mar-der and A.P. Luse,

and over a period of years in the 1860s and 1870s he lobbied vari-ous companies to switch over to the point system which he haddesigned. Hawks’ American typographic point was set at 0.0138”,very close to Fournier’s point of 0.0137” and not far off the Didotpoint measurement of 0.0148”.

Hawks finally managed to convince his employers to supporthis system, and in 1879 the “American System of InterchangeableType Bodies” was announced.

The American printing trade liked having its own standard andadopted it wholesale. The American point was officially sanctionedas the national standard by the Association of Typefounders of theUnited States in 1886, and is today the point system used by allmajor desktop page layout applications.

AND TYPESETTERS GET ITBut beyond a point system, what the world really needed was

a way to speed up the business of making and setting type.William Church of Britain was credited with building the first“typesetting machine” in 1822; James Paige patented his own ver-sion in the U.S. in 1872 (and eventually bankrupted his major in-vestor, Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain).

However it was Ottmar Mergenthaler’s “linotype” composingmachine, introduced in 1886, which forever eliminated composit-ing by hand. Tolbert Lanston followed right on his heels in Europe

with the monotype typeset-ter. This technology wouldbe state of the art for morethan fifty years, until twoFrenchmen, Moyroud andHiggonet, announced theirinvention in 1946, the Lumi-type phototypesetter (whichwas further refined and re-named the Photon in 1948). In 1953 The Wonderful World of In-sects was printed, the first book to be composed using the Photon,and soon after composing machines would fade into history.

In 1885 Linn Boyd Benton brought out the Benton punch cut-ting machine which revolutionized typefounding, seven years afterFrederick Wicks had invented a typecasting machine. But these ad-vances threatened to destroy the typefounding industry. Throughthe efforts of Henry Lewis Bullen, typefounders in the UnitedStates were amalgamated under one banner in 1892, the AmericanType Founders Company.

INTRODUCING THE HALFTONE Yes, the 19th century was a busy period in the history of print-

ing — and the greatest irony of all is that most of the technologiesdeveloped during this century are now obsolete.

One enormous exception is a process developed in the 1880sby a photographer named Frederick Ives.

For many years the holy grail of printing had been the searchfor an inexpensive way to reproduce photographs on a press.Woodburytype, a variation of William Talbot’s photogravureprocess which had been invented in 1866 by Walter Woodbury,was an effective but costlyprocedure for reproducingphotography. It required theuse of plates coated withpotassium bichromate gelatinemulsion, a hydraulic press to make lead printing plates, and spe-cial inks and papers — and in the end, because of the soft leadplates, was only good for press runs of a few hundred sheets, andonly on a gravure press.

For the longer runs associated with commercial printing andpublishing using relief printing methods, this was no help. For theprinting of images, printers were still dependent on labour-inten-sive and expensive wood engraving techniques which had beenaround since the Middle Ages.

Ives’ solution was to break up the continuous tones of a photo-graph into a pattern of small dots — smaller dots for lighter shadesof gray, larger dots for darker shades.

The “Ives Process” — better known as the halftone — was firstshown in 1883 in Harper’s magazine. By 1887, Ives had perfectedhis halftone process through the use of a “crossline” screen which,when inserted into a copy camera above a photosensitive plate,acted as a diffusion grating to break up the continuous tone imageinto an array of tiny points of light and produced varying dot sizes

30 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

One of the earliesthalftone reproduc-

tions, from Harper’sMagazine, 1883

(left) Ottmar Mergenthaler’s linotypecomposing machine, 1886; (right) the

linotype’s type composing system

Fournier’s Manuel Typographique, published in1737, was the first proposal for systemizingtype and type point sizes.

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GRAPHIC EXCHANGE 31

on the plate. This advance made the production of plates morethan ten times faster than before.

Unfortunately, following the poor advice of his employers,Crosscup & West, Frederick Ives never patented his crosslinehalftone method. Instead, details of his technique leaked outthrough various apprentices and ex-employees of the firm and hissecrets were soon spread throughout the industry. Within tenyears, wood engraving was obsolete.

The halftone process continues to be a cornerstone of commer-cial print reproduction, surviving and in fact thriving in the digitalenvironment, even as we move into the computer-to-plate era, andFrederick Ives’ invention must be ranked as one of the most influ-ential events in the history of modern graphics.

PRINTERS GROW AND PREPRESS GETS AN IDENTITYThe 20th century saw many refinements in traditional printing,

but few which could approach the dramatic developments of theprevious hundred years. The century just past saw the rise of glob-al printing empires, on a scale never possible before.

In 1954 Canadian Pierre Peladeau bought a press, and in theprocess founded Quebecor Printing, which, following its recentmerger with World Color, is now the world’s largest printing andpublishing company (usurping the position held for many years byR.R. Donnelley & Sons).

Meanwhile prepress became a high tech science, in large partdue to the inventive genius of Rudolph Hell, father of the colorscanner. His first innovation came in 1929 with the invention of theHell recorder, which twenty years later would provide the basis forhis creation of the Chromagraph analog color scanner. This in turntriggered the growth of scanning technology that would eventuallylead to the current generation of small low cost desktop scanners.

“Prepress” became “digital prepress” and in 1979 an ingeniousIsraeli named Efi Arazi founded a prepress systems companycalled Scitex. Arazi’s genius was to capitalize on burgeoning digitaltechnologies to build a specialized system for prepress productionemploying a unique approach to imaging and type processing.The Scitex system relied on existing technologies for color scan-ning and phototypesetting, but merged this data in a proprietaryformat as continuous tone images and linework, which was thenoutput to film for printing plates without the need to strip piecesof separate film. It wasn’t long before “Scitex” became synony-mous with “state-of-the-art” within the graphic arts industry. By1989, Arazi, having left Scitex behind, started Electronics for Imag-ing (EFI), which today is a world leader in RIP technologies forcolor printers and plotters.

PRINT IN THE PRESENT — AND THE FUTURE? One 20th century invention in particular may prove to be the

definitive event in shaping the future of printing and publishing.The value of Chester Carlson’s 1937 discovery of xerography —photocopying, as we commonly call it — assumes even greater

CONTINUED ON PAGE 34

83MAURITS ESCHER20TH C DUTCH ILLUSTRATORPossibly the most skilful woodcutter since Durerand a master of lithographic art, Maurits Escher’sdrawings containing spatial illusions and repetitivegeometric patterns (called tesselations) continue tofascinate adults and children alike. His impossiblearchitectural illustrations and complex perspectiveshave been studied extensively by both artists andmathematicians and his unique work must berecognized for how it has permeated theconsciousness of the general public.

84RICHARD DONNELLEY19TH C AMERICAN PRINTERRichard Robert Donnelley founded R.R. Donnelleyand Sons in 1864. The company he launchedwould expand to become the world’s largest printer,with plants and offices around the world and annualsales of over $5 billion. The Donnelley company’sinfluence on the development of graphic arts tech-nologies can be summed up quite simply; for ven-dors of new products the litmus test was that if theycould interest Donnelley’s, the rest of the graphicarts market would be compelled to give it a look.

85OTTMAR MERGENTHALER19TH C GERMAN INVENTOR In 1886, the world of printing was stunned by thenews that, 450 years after Gutenberg conceived ofmoveable type, typesetting had finally beenautomated with the invention of the linotypecomposing machine by German inventor OttmarMergenthaler. The Linotype machine (and thesimilar Monotype machine invented by TolstonLambert) influenced the graphic arts industry forover 70 years until the introduction ofphototypesetting in the 1950s and early1960s.

86THOMAS KNOLL20TH C AMERICAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPEROriginally conceived for a university thesis,Photoshop is today the de facto standard fordesktop imaging applications. It was written in1987 by Thomas Knoll, marketed first in 1988 asscanner software by BarneyScan, and acquired byAdobe in 1989, for whom Knoll continued todevelop the product with his brother John until1995. The contribution of Photoshop to today’ssuite of desktop tools gives Knoll “cornerstone”status among desktop software developers.

87 STANLEY MORISON20TH C AMERICAN FONT DESIGNERStanley Morison is remembered as one of theoutstanding names in 20th century typography, thedesigner of Times New Roman and the man whoconceived “systems level typographicalabstraction”. He was a founding member of TheFleuron, a respected typography journal of the1920s, as well as for many years an advisor to theMonotype Corporation.

PHOTO COURTESY R. R. DONNELLEY AND SONS

PHOTO COURTESY JEFF SCHEWE PHOTOGRAPHY

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34 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

significance in the light of developments in desktop publishing. However if, in the midst of the Great Depression, Carlson had-

n’t been forced to take a low paying job in the P.R. Mallory patentdepartment, the photocopier might never have been invented atall. Nearsighted and hampered by arthritis, he became increasinglyannoyed when he found that there were never enough copies ofpatents around. Making more copies meant either sending themout to be photographed or typing out new ones, neither optionbeing inexpensive or quick.

So Carlson began researching alternatives, finally focusing onthe principles of photoconductivity as a potential solution. In thekitchen of his apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, he and hisassistant Otto Kornei began experimentswith sulfur-coated zinc plates that wouldultimately lead to the discovery of “elec-trophotography” in October, 1938.

It was a great idea (or so Carlsonthought) — but not great enough toconvince more than twenty large corpo-rations to whom he presented his dis-covery between 1939 and 1944 (includ-ing IBM, Kodak, General Electric, andRCA). It took a chance meeting in the Mallory patent offices with afellow named Russell Dayton to arrange an introduction to the Bat-telle Corporation — and with three more years of research and de-velopment, the Xerox machine was born.

It still remained for Joseph Wilson and the Haloid Company tosee the future value in Carlson’s discovery, but by 1968 when Carl-son died, Xerox annual sales had passed $600 million.

Not only did the photocopier represent the first truly new print-ing technology since the printing press, but xerography gave birthto today’s laser printing and digital printing technologies.

It is fitting, then, that we give recognition to the tremendousamount of research and development accomplished with Xeroxmoney at its Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s. The legacybegun by Carlson and the technologies fueled by the deep pocketsof Xerox may turn out to have as great a long term effect on theprinting and publishing industry as Johann Fust’s original invest-ment in Gutenberg’s press.

Moveable type begatprinting, and printing be-gat publishing. However itwas an awfully long time be-fore publishers could separatethemselves from the presses fromwhich they were begotten…

The first “electrophoto-graphic” image, created

by Chester Carlson andhis assistant Otto Ko-

rnei in October, 1938 inAstoria, New York

Johann Fust never imagined whathe was starting when he

agreed to loan 800 guldento Gutenberg to build

a printing press.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

78NORMAN ROCKWELL 20TH C AMERICAN ARTISTDespite being underrated for his success as a com-mercial artist, Norman Rockwell captured the char-acter of ordinary American life like no artist beforeor since. He set a standard for realistic illustrationthat influenced not only illustrators but also photog-raphers. Through his prolific output for publicationssuch as the Saturday Evening Post and books likeHuckleberry Finn, Rockwell subtly communicated hispersonal sense of idealism and created a “feel-good”reaction in anyone who saw his work.

79BILL HEWLETT & DAVID PACKARD20TH C AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPERSBeginning in a garage in Palo Alto in 1939 with aninitial capitalization of $538, William Hewlett andDavid Packard founded Hewlett-Packard, thecompany which has become a dominant force in theconsumer personal computing market with annualrevenue of over $50 billion. In 1984, Hewlett-Packard launched the first commercially successfullaser printer, the LaserJet, and subsequentlypioneered inkjet printing technologies.

80ROBERT DENNARD20TH C AMERICAN COMPUTER ENGINEERWithout dynamic random access memory, betterknown as RAM, there would have been no desktoprevolution. IBM computer engineer Robert Dennard’sinvention was patented in 1968 and first producedcommercially in the early 1970s. It has beenreported that there have been more RAM cellsmanufactured than any other man-made object onthe planet.

81 ANDY WARHOL20TH C AMERICAN PAINTER/GRAPHIC ARTISTAndy Warhol broke all the rules of art, usurpingcontent from anywhere and everywhere andunabashedly merging original art with photography ashe saw fit. He was the father of Pop art, redefiningart for a late 20th century mass audience. He alsotook serigraphy (or silk screening) to new levels, andwas one of the earliest to capitalize on newtechnologies like the Polaroid camera to provide newsources of artistic content.

82JOHN ATANASOFF20TH C AMERICAN INVENTORAlthough it took more than thirty years before it wasresolved in a court of law, John Atanasoff and hisassistant Cliff Berry are today recognized as theinventors of the first electronic digital computer, theAtanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), built in 1940. Itwas their work which triggered Eckert and Mauchly’sdevelopment of the ENIAC and UNIAC mainframes inthe mid-1940s. Sadly, although greatly honoured,Atanasoff never received any direct compensation forhis contribution to the evolution of computers.

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PAGE 35METACREATIONS

ADRPT FILM

OCT/NOV P. 35

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36 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

TODAY’S HIGH TECH SECTOR IS A HOTBED OF HIGH RISK FINANC-ing, stock swaps and public offerings. But in the event that wedwell in the misconception that this is a recent phenomenon, it’sinteresting to note that the champions of new technologies haverelied on funding by venture capitalists for hundreds of years.

Gutenberg had his backing from Johann Fust. And the firstgreat print publisher in history, Teobaldo Mannuci, set up the Al-dine Press in Venice in 1490 with money supplied by the Prince ofCarpi, Alberto Pio, whose only condition was that the new ventureshould promote Greek scholarship. Accordingly, Teobaldo fulfilledhis end of the bargain by recruiting a staff of Greek scholars andcompositors, making Greek the official language of both his busi-ness and household — and changing his name to Aldus Manutius.

The Aldine Press under the direction of Aldus published a slewof Greek classics, including the works of Aristotle, Aristophanes,Thucydides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Xenophon, Euripides, Demos-thenes, Plutarch, Plato, Pindar, Hesychius and Athenaeus.

However, beyond setting a high standard of excellence for bothprint quality and content, Manutius contributed two extremely im-portant innovations to the world of printing and publishing. Firstwas his invention of the portable book; before Aldus Manutius,books were large unwieldy codexes which were not scaled for theneeds of the scholar in transit. The Aldine Press produced bookswhich were not only beautifully printed but also small enough tobe packed into the travelling coffers which were becoming fash-ionable at that time.

Second was the introduction of italic type, which he began us-ing extensively in 1500. Credit for this invention was shared withAldus’ punchcutter, Francesco Griffo, a former goldsmith, whohelped to advance typeface design beyond the simple imitation ofhand-drawn characters and elevate it to a higher art.

Until 1517, the press was simply an instrument for reproduc-tion. But the role of the press was forever changed when MartinLuther capitalized on the power of print to carry his attack on theChurch to the people of Germany. No longer would publishing besimply a static process of transferring old writing to ink and paper.In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the press made the Re-formation possible.

THE FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENT THOUGHTFor the next 200 years or more, publishing and printing re-

mained united as one industry. Moreover, the repercussions ofLuther’s actions were to be felt for even longer. Reprisals by reli-gious and government authorities in Europe through various re-strictive regulations (especially in Germany) drove many printersand publishers to emigrate to England or even the New World. In

self-defense, printers organized themselves into guilds in order tomaintain control over the output of print and thereby assuage theChurch and state. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, publish-ing was governed by strict monopolistic government licenses.

It wasn’t until England passed the Copyright Act of 1710 thatthe public’s right to the distribution of literature without monopolywas finally recognized. In 1793 France passed its own copyrightlaw, allowing the printing and publishing industry to publish andprint without restrictions.

Christophe Plantin, who fled France in 1548 to escape religiouspersecution, was one of the most famous early publishers. Plantinpublished the Polyglot Bible in Belgium in 1573, a monumentalwork produced in eight volumes and five languages. King James Iorganized one of the world’s largest publishing projects to datewhen he financed the production of the English Bible that bearshis name. It kept 48 translators employed and was published in1604. In Germany in 1609, Johan Carolus began publishing theworld’s first newspaper, the AVISA RELATION ODER ZEITUNG. In March,1702, the world’s first woman newspaper publisher, Elizabeth Mal-let, started England’s first daily journal, the DAILY COURANT.

Publishing also owes much to innovations in binding by suchnoteworthy figures as John Bale, the 16th century English bibliog-rapher, and Jakob Krause, the 16th century German bookbinder.

HOW ADVERTISING CHANGED PUBLISHINGWith the loosening of state control over printing and publish-

ing, the rise of the middle classes, and an increase in literacy, pub-lishing in the 18th century began to take on the form which weknow today.

In the United States the first newspaper, John Campbell’sBOSTON NEWS-LETTER, appeared in 1704 (after a false start in 1690,when Benjamin Harris printed one issue of PUBLICK OCCURENCES,BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTICK, only to be shut down by Boston’sgovernor). Benjamin Franklin played a vital role in jumpstarting hiscountry’s publishing industry when he took over as the publisherof the PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE in 1728, as well as moonlighting as theauthor of POOR RICHARD’SALMANACK.

With the introductionof high speed presses inthe 19th century, thepublishing industry be-gan to bloom. Alongwith the rise of publica-tions for mass consump-tion, a new dimension

The first political cartoon,“Join or Die”,published by Benjamin Franklin in the

Pennsylvania Gazette, circa 1730

PublishingFEEDING THE DEMAND FORINFORMATION AND PRODUCTS

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expanded the pub-lishing model — afeature called “ad-vertising”.

What we acceptnow as a necessarybut often intrusive

part of publishing was decried at first as an unwanted, declassécorruption of the publishing form. But publishers knew a goodthing when they saw it. The extra revenue that advertising provid-ed was a welcome hedge against unpredictable copy sales.

When Volney Palmer started the first advertising agency in1842, buying and reselling space in various publications, it was animmediate success. Acting as a jobber, Palmer not only relieved

publishers of the expense of selling ads individually but alsofacilitated the first national advertising campaigns by being

able to take an advertiser’s ad and place it in publicationsall over the country. His approach worked so well that

by 1849 he had opened offices in Philadelphia, NewYork, Boston and Baltimore, and his agency wassole advertising representative for about two-thirds

of the country’s estimated 2,000 newspapers andmagazines.

Over the next thirty years, advertising agentswheeled and dealed as middlemen between advertis-ers and publishers with no consistent standards.

Finally, in 1875, Francis Wayland Ayer decided itwas time to put the role of the agency on the table.Ayer introduced the “open contract” commission sys-tem, whereby an agency’s remuneration would beestablished up front according to an agreed uponformula, and both advertisers and publishers wouldknow exactly how much the agency was collectingfor its service. Along with that he also launched the

concept of a “full service” advertising agency, allowing an advertis-er to delegate the job of creating, executing and placing theclient’s promotion materials. What we accept as standard practicetoday was a radical notion 125 years ago.

It wasn’t long after that when publishers twigged to the ideathat advertising could be more than just supplemental income totheir bookstand sales. In the 1880s, Cyrus Curtis of Philadelphiabecame the first American publisher to adopt the advertising-basedpublishing model when, in 1883, he and his wife, Louisa KnappCurtis, spun off Louisa’s popular women’s column that appeared intheir TRIBUNE AND FARMER periodical into a brand new magazine de-voted solely to women’s interests.

Francis Wayland Ayercreated today’s modelfor advertising agen-cies when in 1875 headopted a systembased on open disclo-sure of commission toboth publishers andclients and a “full serv-ice” agency which of-fered design, produc-tion and placement, allunder one roof.

A 19th century bookmaking machine

75MATHEW BRADY19TH C AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERMathew Brady ranks as one of the great Americanphotographers of the 19th century. Renowned forhis stark shots of American Civil War carnage, hepredated modern photorealism in journalism by100 years with his shocking 1862 images of bat-tlefield corpses from Antietam. But he went bank-rupt after the war when war-weary Americans lostinterest in buying pictures of the bloody conflict.His collection of negatives was purchased in1875 by the U.S. Congress for $25,000.

74 HENRY & SEALY FOURDRINIER19TH C FRENCH INVENTORSModern web presses still depend on the technologyfor making rolls of paper developed in the early1800s by the Fourdrinier brothers, Henry andSealy, who bought the patent for paper rollproduction from Nicholas Robert in 1804. TheFourdriniers (under the guidance of their chiefengineer, Bryan Donkin) improved its design sosignificantly that by 1838 over 100 of theirmachines were in use in Europe.

73 ERICH SALOMON20TH C GERMAN PHOTOGRAPHERThe original “candid camera” belonged to ErichSalomon, a German photographer who in the late1920s seized the opportunity presented byBarnack’s introduction of the 35mm miniaturecamera. Salomon may justifiably lay claim tobeing the world’s first “papparazzi”, inauguratingthe concept of taking pictures of famous peoplewhen they were least expecting it. Sadly, he diedin a Nazi concentration camp in 1945.

76 GARY STARKWEATHER20TH C AMERICAN INVENTORThe rich legacy of Xerox PARC includes thedevelopment of the laser printer, which GaryStarkweather created in 1969 employing theprinciples of xerography. Starkweather holds over30 patents in the fields of imaging, color, andhardcopy devices. He went on to become asenior developer in publishing and color imagingat Apple and is currently an imaging architect forMicrosoft.

77 RICHARD HOE19TH C AMERICAN PRESS BUILDERIn 1871 Richard March Hoe perfected WilliamBullock’s continuous roll press, a device whichproduced as many as 18,000 newspapers in anhour. The Hoe press was quickly adopted bymajor newspaper publishers across the UnitedStates.

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Initially Curtis began offering full page ads for $200; ten yearslater he was charging $4,000 per page. THE LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL

became one of the most successful publications in American pub-lishing history and made Mr. and Mrs. Curtis one of the richestcouples in the United States.

The Curtis Publishing Company would later pioneer the scienceof demographics when it created its Commercial Research Depart-ment in 1911, developing the first system to measure readers’ so-cial, cultural and economic profiles through surveys, reader re-sponse cards and circulation audits.

MUNSEY AND THE TEN CENT MAGAZINEBut it was a publish-

er named Frank Munsey,desperate to keep hissmall publication MUN-SEY’S MAGAZINE afloat,who would lead the in-dustry into the twentiethcentury.

Not only was Munseythe first to adopt photo-mechanical reproductionand the use of halftoneson a full scale basis, giv-ing his book a look thattranscended all the com-petition (and in theprocess saving his pub-lishing career), but itwas MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

that set off the “TenCent Magazine Revolu-tion”. Up until then,magazine publishers hadsettled upon a standard bookstand price of 25 cents per copy. Butwhen Munsey relaunched his “new look” magazine in 1893 withthe unheard-of cover price of 10 cents, he quickly captured a hugereadership, forcing publishers across the nation to meet the newlower price.

Munsey’s Magazine was relaunched in1893 using revolutionary new halftone

technology and the low cover price of 10cents (above, February, 1894 issue).

67 IVAN SUTHERLAND20TH C AMERICAN COMPUTER SCIENTISTThe evolution of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) beganwith Ivan Sutherland’s 1963 Ph.D. thesis at MIT called“Sketchpad: A Man-machine Graphical CommunicationsSystem”. What Sketchpad provided was the ability forengineers to draw geometric figures on a screen andmanipulate them in real time without any computerprogramming knowledge, using the very first graphicaluser interface. Sutherland also co-developed “virtualreality”; his company was eventually absorbed by Sun Microsystems.

72RENÉ MAGRITTE20TH C FRENCH ARTISTRené Magritte’s style of pure and captivating surreal-ism, where unrelated objects could be found strange-ly juxtaposed, was untainted by commercialism, eventhough ultimately his work influenced creative inmodern advertising. Beginning his career as a wallpa-per designer, Magritte became a leading member ofthe newly formed Belgian Surrealist group in 1924.Warhol, among others, owes much to Magritte andhis dreamy incongruous art; in fact, many regardMagritte as the original icon of 1960s Pop art.

71 BENOIT MANDELBROT20TH C FRENCH MATHEMATICIANThe field of fractal geometry owes its existence toBenoit Mandelbrot’s 1975 paper on the subject.Many of today’s desktop painting programs (particu-larly any software development by Krause) employprinciples expounded in his subsequent book “TheFractal Geometry of Nature” in which he describedhow fractals (i.e. what Mandelbrot called “fractionaldimensions” where, for instance, a one-dimensionalline might curve around to cover a two-dimensionalplane) could be applied to computer imagery.

68JOHANN GOETHE19TH C GERMAN COLOR SCIENTISTWhile the rest of the world knows Johann Wolfgangvon Goethe for his literary genius (“Faust” being themost famous), it is in the realm of color that hisname must be counted as one of the giants ofgraphics evolution. His lifelong study of color whichculminated in the treatise called “Farbenlehre”[Color Theory] in 1810 was a landmark exploration ofcolor harmony and contrast.

69ANSEL ADAMS20TH C AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERAnsel Adams’ influence on modern photography canbe recognized right through to the present day. Hisvisionary images of the wild outdoors and particularlywestern American landscapes with a special ability tocapture the subtleties of light and shadows haveinspired generations of photographers after him.Adams also invented the “zone” method ofphotography, which is still used by photographerstoday.

70 PIERRE-SIMON FOURNIER18TH C FRENCH TYPEFOUNDERIn 1737 Pierre-Simon Fournier published a bookletcalled “Tables des Proportions qu’il faut observerentre les caractères” which introduced the conceptof a “point system” for type and which wouldbecome the basis for setting type in variousstandardized sizes. The following year he published atype specimen book based on his “cicero” type sizesystem.

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QWERTY TAKES OVER THE KEYSThe publishing business model was undoubtedly reshaped by

publishers’ acceptance of advertising as a core source of revenue,and distribution gains and production improvements closely fol-lowed enhancements in press technologies.

But one invention above all cemented the connection betweenpublisher and printer.

In 1829 an American inventor patented a machine he called thetypographer. William Burt’s invention, the first workable type writ-ing device, allowed the user to print one letter at a time by push-

ing down on a lever, which brought the typeagainst the paper.

Although in the ensuing years many at-tempts were made to design a machine capableof generating type on paper, it wasn’t until 1874that a commercial typewriter appeared on themarket.

The principal architect of the first successful typewriter wasChristopher Sholes of Milwaukee, assisted by Carlos Glidden.Sholes built his first machine in 1868, but it took him six years toline up a manufacturing contract for his invention.

Finally the Rem-ington Companyagreed to take apiece of the actionin return for manu-facturing the Sholes-Glidden Type-Writer.But it wasn’t until1878, when the type-writer was revampedto include both up-per and lower caseletters, controlled bya shift key, that salesreally took off.

There may bethose who view thetypewriter as only aperipheral to graphic

communications, but since its inception it’s unlikely that many jobsin publishing, advertising or design have not started with fingerstapping on a keyboard — and this holds truer still since the adventof the personal computer. Throughout this time frame, one thinghas remained constant: Christopher Sholes’ QWERTY keyboardarrangement, patented in 1878 in order to alleviate the problem ofclashes and jams with the original typewriter’s typebars of com-monly paired letters (such as “th”).

A final addendum to the story of the typewriter: Sholes re-ceived technical assistance in perfecting his invention from oneother source — not surprisingly, the ubiquitous Thomas Edison.

THE MODERN PUBLISHING ERAIn the late 19th and 20th centuries, publishing finally gained its

independence from the printing industry. Succeeding Cyrus Curtis, was the infamous William Randolph

Hearst, a dominant figure in the 1920s and 1930s in an era beforethe age of corporate publishing when individuals could single-handedly control huge publishing empires. Although globally-bound publishing magnates like Rupert Murdoch and ConradBlack still threaten to corner the modern publishing market today,the wave of desktop technologies which began to appear in thelate 1980s and 1990s may once again return the power of the pressto independent publishers.

If one had to choose one individual who has been more influ-ential in disseminating information about new publishing technolo-gies in North America than any other, that figure is arguablyJonathan Seybold, founder of Seybold Seminars and Expositionand the show’s charismatic figurehead from its inception in the late1970s until 1996. The Seybold name is still synonymous with themost prestigious event in the publishing industry; Seybold confer-ence sessions became legendary for the discussion and outrightbattles they engendered.

Publishing was built first on the printed word, and later withimages and words designed to work together on a page. But whoput the creative energy into designing the pages that made upthose publications, and the fonts that formed those words?

Without content creators — the people who created the de-signs for both type and pages — neither printers nor publisherswould ever have stayed in business…

The world’s first typist — Lillian Sholes,Christopher’s daughter, using the all-new

Sholes-Glidden Type-Writer in 1874.

William Burt’s“typographer”,the first workingtypewriter, 1830

65JOHN HERSCHEL19TH C BRITISH ASTRONOMER/PHOTOGRAPHERThe term “photography”, as well as “negative”, “pos-itive” and “snapshot” all sprung from use in Sir JohnHerschel’s doctorate presented to the Royal Societyin London in March, 1839. This British astronomerand photographer also introduced the “cyanotype”or blueprint in 1842, which still remains a fixture inarchitects’ and commercial printers’ production en-vironments. His 1839 discovery of a method to fixphotographs using hyposulphite of soda completedTalbot’s calotype photography process.

66CHARLES SIMONYI20TH C HUNGARIAN COMPUTER SCIENTISTTogether with Butler Lampson, Charles Simonyideveloped the first WYSIWYG (What You See Is WhatYou Get) text editor on a personal computer when hewrote Bravo at Xerox PARC in 1976. This piece ofprogramming would become a cornerstone of theMacintosh’s WYSIWYG display technology when it wasintroduced in 1984. Simonyi now toils for Microsoft.

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“GRAPHIC DESIGN” IS VERY MUCH A 20TH CENTURY CONCEPT. INfact, the term itself wasn’t coined until 1922 by the famous Ameri-can designer William Dwiggins.

However the history of type is as old as printing itself, so per-haps we should start there.

TYPE GETS A STYLEIn October, 1458, Charles II, king of France, having heard

about a radical new device called a “printing press”, dispatched hisMaster of the Royal Mint to Mainz, Germany to find out moreabout this miraculous invention.

Nicholaus Jenson spent two years in Mainz, learning the art ofprinting from the master, Johannes Gutenberg. However, when hereturned in 1461, he discovered that Charles had died and his sonhad no interest in new technologies.

Emigrating to Venice, Italy, Jenson soon began refining hisskills in printing, punchcutting and en-graving. At this time type was createdby copying the handwritten letters ofthe scribes.

In 1470 Jenson published De Evan-gelica Praeparatione of Eusebius,which permanently distinguished himas arguably the most significant figurein the history of type. For it was thisvolume which introduced his majesti-cally proportioned classic roman fontwhich, along with the italics inventedby Aldus Manutius (described underPublishing) represent the foundation ofall type. Jenson’s Roman remains oneof the greatest typefaces ever designed.And with its arrival the art of type de-sign was born.

THE TYPE SPECIALISTSIt took over 100 years, but roman

type was finally introduced into Eng-land in 1572 by John Day, althoughsamples of his work demonstrate thathe never quite achieved a level of qual-ity to compare with Jenson.

The first true type specialist wasClaude Garamond, whose first romanfont in 1530 was inspired by Jenson.Before Garamond, printers had to be

multi-faceted artisans, exe-cuting everything fromfont design and punchcut-ting to printing and book-binding. The German prin-ter and typographer Er-hard Ratdolt had been thefirst to print a type speci-men sheet in 1486, today astandard reference tool inany graphic designer’ssuite of accessories.

Throughout the late16th and 17th centuries,political persecution had adetrimental effect on thequality of both type andprinting. But with the re-vival of printing and pub-lishing came a renewed level of artistic typography.

Three names stand out for their restoration of the standards setby Jenson, Manutius, Garamond, Conrad Sweynheym, FrancescoGriffo and other early type artisans.

First is William Caslon of Britain, master of simple yet eleganttype, skilled craftsman and astute businessman. Caslon opened histype foundry in 1720; in 1734 he issued his first type sheets consist-ing of 38 samples, 35 of which he designed himself. He is recog-nized as the premier typefounder and font designer of his century(and, indeed, the American Declaration of Independence would beprinted using a Caslon font).

After Caslon comes his countrymanJohn Baskerville. By the age of 34, Bas-kerville was already the well-to-do ownerof a varnishing business, as well as a skilfulengraver — of gravestones. It wasn’t untilafter 1750, in the last third of his life, thathe began experimenting with papermaking,inks, typefounding and printing. After hisdeath his font designs fell out of favour forover 150 years until they were finally re-popularized in the 1920s by type vendorsMonotype and Linotype.

Finally, there is Giambatista Bodoni, anItalian printer and font designer of the late18th and early 19th century, who is regard-ed as the father of the modern roman type-

Jenson’s Roman type,created in 1470

Italic type, invented byAldus Manutius in 1501

Content creation in the mid-18th century

Bodoni’s “Manuale Tipografico”containing 291 alphabets,

published in 1788.

DesignCREATIVE CONTENT EVOLVES FROMFONT DESIGN TO PAGE LAYOUT

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face. Bodoni refined the Baskerville style (which he greatly ad-mired) to create a unique appearance distinctively his own, bring-ing in the thin straight contemporary serifs and bold verticalstrokes with which we are familiar today.

Alas, with the Industrial Revolution came another decline ingraphic arts standards which would not be reversed until Britishprinter and publisher William Morris, leader of the Arts and Craftsmovement, founded the Kelmscott Press and energetically lobbiedthe trade for the revival of quality printing and typography.

TWENTIETH CENTURY TYPE AND DESIGNOver the last hundred years many excellent type designers

have contributed to the development of the rich and diverse li-brary of typefaces we enjoy today, including Theodore De Vinne,Frederic Goudy, Stanley Morison, Morris Benton, Adrian Frutiger,Robert Middleton, Matthew Carter (founder of Bitstream), NevilleBrody, Paul Renner, Herman Zapf and Eric Gill.

Let us also acknowledge Swiss designer Max Miedinger for pro-viding us with the font which is more commonly seen today thanany other: Helvetica.

In the relatively new field of graphic design, trends are less di-rectly attributable to individuals, but certainly such modern cre-ative luminaries as Kyle Cooper, James Earle Frazer, Saul Bass,David Carson, and Massimo Vignelli deserve mention, as well asBauhaus master Herbert Bayer and John Heartfield, the pre-warGerman innovator of montage.

Twentieth century design also owes a great deal to the influ-ence of American designer and art director Paul Rand, who was re-sponsible for the corporate identities of such big names as IBM,Westinghouse, UPS, ABC, NeXT Computer, and Yale University.

And who in the advertising industry will ever forget the in-spired genius of William Bernbach (co-founder of DDB Needham,née Doyle, Dane, Bernbach Advertising), creator of Volkswagen’sgroundbreaking ads of the 1960s and 1970s with their stunning useof white space?

But perhaps it’s fitting that the final word on design should goto the woman who first demonstrated the concept of combiningtype, illustration and photography in advertising. Chicago-basedphotographer Beatrice Tonnesen pioneered this style of promotionback in the early 1890s with tremendous success — and over onehundred years later, print advertising still hasn’t found a better wayto sell product.

Which goes to prove once again that a picture really is worth athousand words — or even a thousand fonts.

However, without compelling art and illustration, effectivegraphic communication would be a great deal more challenging…

61 HENRI MATISSE20TH C FRENCH ARTISTIn 1906 an art critic viewed a roomful of work byHenri Matisse and others of his clique, and dubbedit “la cage aux fauves” (“cage of wild beasts”). Thelabel stuck and Matisse assumed a leading role inthe Fauvist movement. He was heavily influenced byCézanne, though his career would evolve throughseveral phases. His use of bright colors and his ex-perimentation with new papers and pigments set thestyle for modern use of color. Matisse is regarded asone of the most important painters of his century.

62JOHN AUDUBON19TH C AMERICAN ILLUSTRATORJohn James Audubon was the illegitimate son of aFrench naval captain and one of the captain’s Frenchhands on his sugar plantation in Haiti. He married hislove of animals and birds in their natural habitat withhis talent for illustration, and between 1826 and1838 created an enduring body of 435 engravingsstill enjoyed by nature lovers today. It was by travel-ling to England that he found both the support andthe color printing expertise to publish his collectionof drawings for an appreciative base of subscribers.

63JOHN BASKERVILLE18TH C BRITISH PRINTER/TYPE DESIGNERJohn Baskerville never realized his personal goalof improving upon the typefaces of the greatCaslon, but nonetheless is ranked as one of thegreat names in typography, the creator of many“transitional” typefaces. He produced his firsttypeface in 1754, and proved himself to be asexpert at printing as he was at type design.

64FOX TALBOT19TH C BRITISH INVENTORWilliam Henry Talbot (who disliked his morecommon tag of Fox Talbot) is remembered for hisinvention of calotype photography (patented in1841) and photogravure (1852). His first papernegative was made in 1835; he tried to extractexcessive licensing fees for its use but Daguerrehad already given his daguerreotype process tothe world and Talbot’s marketing attempts were afailure.

60PHILIPP RUNGE19TH C GERMAN ARTISTPhilipp Otto Runge was a painter of expressive andlyrical imagery. However his legacy to the world ofgraphics is in his contribution to our understandingof color, for Runge was the first to construct anexplicitly three-dimensional color wheel,demonstrating the concepts of hue, lightness andsaturation almost a century before Munsell.

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Art & IllustrDRAWING IS NOT THE FORM; IT IS THE WAY OF SEEING THE FORM.” ~ Degas

IN A RETROSPECTIVE OF GRAPHICS PEOPLE, PAINTERS HAVE THEIR

place as the interpreters of new technologies as much as they dofor their ‘styles’. From our vantage point in the 21st century, it isdifficult to imagine the shock that each new way of painting andprinting had upon viewers. But the history of art is full of storiesabout the violent reactions of both critics and the public upon con-fronting “new ways of seeing the form”.

THE EXQUISITE MASTERY OF THE RENAISSANCEWe probably have to go right back to Jan van Eyck in the 15th

century to find a genuinely revolutionary technique that wouldchange how people read imagery. Whether or not van Eyck in-vented oil painting is not crucial; the important point is the way heused this new medium in thin glazes to build up his painting tosuch astonishing richness of detail.

Other artists would make the pilgrimage to the Netherlands forcenturies afterwards to see his brilliant works. In his own day peo-ple would have been exposed largely to religious icons with theirflat gold-leaf backgrounds. Unless they travelled to Italy, theywould rarely see anything but these two-dimensional images; vanEyck suddenly thrusts the viewer into a world that has depth, with

distant landscapes outside the win-dows, and deep reflections in themirrors. In his paintings we find themeeting place of technique and vi-sual vocabulary that lasts through-out the Renaissance.

One man who did travel to Italyat this time was Albrecht Durer. Tohis amazement, the Italians treatedartists with respect, unlike his na-tive Germany, where they weresimply craftsmen. Durer was the

master print maker of his (oranyone’s) day, and carried hisart all over Europe. The ex-tremely fine detail of his en-gravings carried over into hispaintings, prompting Italianpainter Giovanni Bellini to askDurer to make him a present ofthe brush he used to do hairwith. He expected to see abrush that could paint severalhairs in one stroke, not suspect-ing that Durer drew each hair

one at a time. Durer’s artistry still astonishes today.

The maturing of the new visual vocabulary peaked with theman who virtually represents the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci.The painter of the most famous painting in history also gave us thenotion of “sweet light”, the hour or so just before sunset wheneverything seems to glow. Photographers and film makers still tryto achieve that luminescence in their lighting. Leonardo captured itin his painting with a revolutionary blending of shadows into ob-scurity, and gradations that made the highlights seem to emergefrom the shadows. It came to be called chiaroscuro, and remainsthe fundamental tool we use to understand form in a 2D image.But it is also inherently a way to create mood in a picture; da Vin-ci’s language of Light and Shadow would eventually evolve intoregarding light itself as the real subject of art.

IMPRESSIONISM — BREAKING WITH TRADITIONWhen the Impressionists erupted on the art world, they were

using the very latest technologies and theories of their day. Frenchchemist Chevreul’s work pointed to the optical effects of placingpure colors next to each other; using the new ‘tubes’ of paint on awhite canvas, the Impressionists undid half a century of tradition.Since Leonardo, painters had started a painting on a brown or greybackground and added both shadows and highlights to built upthe modelling. We are so familiar with inks and pigments on awhite ground that earlier painting actually looks dark to us.

Honoré Daumier, himself a celebrated political cartoonist andpainter, is said to have remarked, “I’m not a very great admirer ofManet’s work, but I find it has this important quality: it is helpingto bring art back to the simplicity of playing-cards.” Perhaps be-cause Édouard Manet was honestly trying to get his ‘playing cards’accepted at the French Salon, he became a hero for every youngartist in Paris. They saw modern subjects treated in a completelymodern way and carried this vision into the twentieth century.

We all know about Toulouse-Lautrec mixing his own printinginks to create the posters he is perhaps best known for, but whathe was doing, in fact, was introducing drawn outlines filled withflat areas of color to everyone on the boulevards of Paris. It wasJapanese — it was like a stained glass window, but on paper. Itwas a visual tool, a way of economically representing things onpaper that has survived all the way to our digital world in the formof Illustrator and Freehand art.

As the twentieth century approached, painters encountered atechnology that created a very real identity crisis: photography.Was there any point in painting objects when Monsieur Daguerre’sinvention could capture them so much more faithfully? Quite a fewartists used the camera to “take notes” for future reference, a prac-

The depth and detail of Jan van Eyck’swork jumpstarted Renaissance art; ob-serve the reflection in the convex mirrorabove. (The Arnolfini Marriage, 1434, oilon panel, National Gallery at London)

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tice that decades later would reach its peak in the highly “photo-graphic” stylings of Norman Rockwell. However a unique few de-cided that painting would have to distinguish itself entirely witheven bolder use of color and style.

Considered the father of modern art, Paul Cézanne embodiedthe ideal of the man who lived solely for his art. He lived likedsome modern hermit in the south of France and created for him-self art theories that bypassed all previous rules of representation.The results sent a shockwave through the art world.

FROM “WILD BEASTS” TO THE MAGIC KINGDOMTwo giants now strode on the scene, taking Cézanne’s cue in

two very different directions. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picassodragged painting, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth centu-ry; the former with his use (or abuse) of electric color and Fau-vism, and the latter with the bewildering range of styles and exper-iments he commanded, including Cubism. Color and form hadnow become the whole point of painting and their pursuit wouldpave the way for painters to eventually escape the tyranny of “ob-jects” altogether.

Not everyone deserted the “object” for abstraction, but objectswere now being put to quite a different use. René Magritte is easi-ly the most imitated of the Surrealist painters. One finds his ideasemulated repeatedly by photographers and digital artists alike.Maurits Escher, an extraordinary printmaker, also employed objectsin solving (or creating) intellectual puzzles. His enigmatic illustra-tions still produce a sense of wonder and surprise. But perhaps thebiggest “consumer” of objects to be used in his art was AndyWarhol. Equally comfortable in painting and serigraphy, Warholused everyday objects as something to be experimented with.

Through the 60s, ever-increasing minimalism brought greaterattention to white space on the canvas and the page. Collage andkinetic art came off the wall; performance art led to political art,and the more provocative revolutionary art of the 1980s and 90s.

The use of photography as a pretext to artistic distortions findsits digital messiah at the end of the 20th century in Thomas Knoll,creator of Photoshop. This software proved to be such a flexibleimage manipulating tool that programmer/artists like Kai Krausewere able to create worlds within the program itself. With Kai’splug-ins, the mathematical musings of Benoit Mandelbrot becamefractal art that computers could generate with ease.

But we can’t leave the 20th century without acknowledging itsgreatest icon creator, Walt Disney. His use of every new technolog-ical innovation that presented itself (sound, color film, stereo) al-lowed him, through his army of artists, to create some of the cen-tury’s most memorable and powerful imagery…

ration

55WILLIAM CAXTON15TH C ENGLISH PRINTERAfter building a personal fortune as a shrewd mer-chant between 1446 and 1453, William Caxtonsaw the potential of the newly invented printingpress. Probably learning his craft in Cologne, Cax-ton introduced printing to England, setting up thefirst press in England in 1476. He primarily wantedto support demand for his literary endeavours, es-pecially his popular “History of Troy”, completed in1471. In the next fifteen years his masterful print-ing output would be both prolific and wide spread.

56LOUIS DUCOS DU HAURON19TH C FRENCH COLOR SCIENTISTThe principles of subtractive color theory whichform the basis of producing both color photographyand process color printing can be traced back to aproposal put forward in 1869 by French scientistLouis Ducos du Hauron in his book “Les Couleursen Photographie”. He also patented the trichromecolor photo process in 1868, and later, in 1891,the anaglyph method of stereoscopic photography.

57LUDWIG VON SIEGEN17TH C GERMAN ENGRAVERLudwig von Siegen was a German soldier, artistand engraver who, aside from his colossal inven-tion of mezzotint engraving around 1640, is a fair-ly unknown figure. He was friends with Prince Ru-pert, nephew of Charles I, who was responsible forcarrying mezzotinting to England, where it enjoyedgreat popularity. The earliest date that can be at-tached to mezzotint is 1642 in Von Siegen’s por-trait of the Landravine Amelia Elizabeth. Mezzotintwas the forerunner of what today’s FM screening.

58WILLIAM CASLON18TH C BRITISH TYPEFOUNDERBy combining his skills as an engraver andcraftsman with his talents in art and design,William Caslon rose to become the premiertypefounder and font designer of his century. Thepopularity of his masterful yet simple typedesigns spread across England and to the U.S.throughout the 18th century (in fact, theDeclaration of Independence was set in Caslontype) and his work continues to influence fontdesigners to this day.

59HENRI TOULOUSE-LAUTREC19TH C FRENCH ARTISTDespite being hampered throughout his life by illhealth, alcoholism and mental instability,Toulouse-Lautrec made a lasting impression onmodern art with his colorful posters of the 1880sand 1890s, particularly his famous “At the MoulinRouge” of 1892, in which he depicted the prosti-tutes, barmaids, clowns, and actors of Montmartre.His experimentation with inks lent a distinctive ap-pearance to his work; his use of lithographyshowed artists how to reach a wider audience.

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IN JANUARY, 1839, BRITISH ASTRONOMER SIR JOHN HERSCHEL

(the man who discovered the planet Uranus) saw samples of LouisDaguerre’s just-announced daguerreotype photography process forthe first time. He wrote to his friend Fox Talbot, “It is hardly toomuch to call them miraculous. Certainly they surpass anything Icould have conceived as within the bounds of reasonable expecta-tion…Every gradation of light and shade is given with a softnessand fidelity which sets all painting at an immeasurable distance…Ifyou have a few days at your disposition…come and see!”

It should be noted that Herschel’s assessment of Daguerre’s re-markable invention bore more weight than most since it was, infact, in his paper on the subject presented to the Royal Society inMarch, 1839 that he coined the term “photography” — along withthe terms “negative”, “positive”, and “snapshot”. But Talbot wasundoubtedly quite annoyed by Herschel’s letter since he consid-ered himself the originator of photography, having produced hisfirst paper negative photographic image four years earlier.

Despite the fact that Talbot’s process still wasn’t great (the sen-sitivity of his papers was rather poor), he started publicizing itheavily, beginning with a presentation at the Royal Institution onwhat he called “photogenic drawing”. Then in 1840, he discovered

by accident that by resen-sitizing his paper, hecould lower exposuretimes drastically — froman hour or so to just a fewminutes. With this newand improved version inhand, which he namedthe calotype, he set out tosell it to the world, patent-ing it in February, 1841.

Unfortunately, this

proved to be the wrong strategy, since Daguerre had made a dealwith the French government to give away the daguerreotypeprocess freely. It was made worse by the fact that Talbot was de-manding exorbitant licensing fees for the rights to use calotype.When Scott Archer introduced his faster, better wet collodionmethod in 1851, Talbot took him to court for patent infringement— and lost. That effectively put an end to calotype.

So it is that Louis Daguerre received the lion’s share of recogni-tion for inventing photography.

But, in truth, if Daguerre had not been shown the secrets of“heliographic” photography by its inventor, Joseph NicephoreNiepce, after they became partners in 1829, one wonders whetherhe would have ever pursued perfecting the daguerreotype (whichhe succeeded in doing in 1837 when he developed a method forbeing able to fix images). For it was Niepce who produced theworld’s first known photograph in 1827, and who might havegained the fame which accrued to Daguerre — if only he hadn’tdied four years after the partnership was formed.

CAMERA OBSCURAPhotography in its current incarnation began in the nineteenth

century — but long before its invention, the theory of the camerawas known and utilized.

The principles of camera obscura — light projecting through asmall hole to produce an inverted image in a dark enclosure —can be traced back at least as far as Aristotle.Camera obscura was described by Arabianscholar Hassan Ibn Hassan in the 11th centu-ry, by 13th and 14th century scholars such asRoger Bacon, JohnPeckham, Arnaud deVilleneuve, and Leviben Gershon, and il-

One of Fox Talbot’s early calotypephotos, a bookshelf in his study.

This 1657 diagram byGaspar Schott

demonstrates the setupfor camera obscura.

PhotograCAMERA OBSCURA LEADSTO THE FIXED IMAGE

53JAMES MAXWELL19TH C ENGLISH COLOR SCIENTISTIn 1861, James Maxwell demonstrated that by takingthree pictures through primary colored filters, overlayingthem, and projecting the three using correspondingfilters, it was possible to produce full color photographicimages, an enormous leap ahead in enabling theinvention of color photography. Maxwell also laid out theelectromagnetic spectrum theory, in itself a notableachievement.

54NELSON HAWKS19TH C AMERICAN TYPEFOUNDERAlthough both Fournier and Didot had established pointsystems for type long before Nelson Hawks beganchampioning the “American System of InterchangeableType Bodies” in the late 1860s, it was Hawks whosucceeded in convincing the American printing trade toadopt his standard. It was accepted almost immediatelyafter it was announced in 1879, officially recognized in1886, and it is his system of point measurement towhich we adhere today, even with the evolution todesktop technologies.

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lustrated for the first time by Johannes de Fontana in 1420.It was Leonardo da Vinci who wrote the first detailed descrip-

tion of camera obscura in the 16th century (although, since hewrote everything backwards, it was another three hundred yearsbefore J. B. Venturi deciphered it in 1797). In the same time frameVenetian nobleman Daniel Barbaro wrote of employing camera ob-scura for drawing, one of the first references to it as an artist’s toolfor projecting and tracing an image. It is probably no accident thatthe realistic perspective of Re-naissance paintings and illustra-tions coincided with a broaderawareness of this technique.

In 1652 “La PerspectiveCurieuse” was published, aposthumous detailed account ofthe process written by artist Jean-Francois Niceron, who had alsowritten extensively during hislifetime on perspective, lenses

Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th centurysketches included what lookssuspiciously like a camera.

Collodionphotography byJulia MargaretCameron, 1875

phy 51 ANDREAS HAMM19TH C GERMAN PRESS BUILDERIn 1850, 26 year old Andreas Hamm took aninterest in his brother’s bell foundry and machinebusiness in Frankenthal, Germany. By 1858 heand his partner, Andreas Albert, weremanufacturing high speed presses, and within sixyears his tiny company had grown to become oneof Germany’s leading manufacturers of printingpresses. Today the business Hamm started isknown as Heidelberg, the world’s largest pressmanufacturer.

47JOSEPH NIEPCE19TH C FRENCH INVENTORThe world’s first successful “fixed” photograph wasproduced by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1827.Unable to enlist support from England’s RoyalSociety, Niepce partnered with Daguerre on thedevelopment of his invention, “heliographic”photography, until his death in 1833. There can belittle doubt that Daguerre and the evolution of thedaguerreotype benefited greatly from Niepce’sinfluence and knowledge.

48VANNEVAR BUSH20TH C AMERICAN SCIENTIST/WRITERWhen we use the expression “desktop”, we canthank Vannevar Bush. Bush proposed the desktopmetaphor to illustrate his “Memex” concept of in-formation storage and retrieval in a July, 1945 ar-ticle in Atlantic Monthly called “As We MayThink”. Among the many future scientists whowere inspired by Bush’s vision was Doug Engel-bart. Bush also invented the Differential Analyzerin 1930; his primary blind spot was an inability toforesee the role of digital technologies.

49FRIEDRICH KOENIG19TH C GERMAN PRESS BUILDERIn 1811 Frederich Koenig built the first steam-powered twin cylinder printing press (actually histhird version — Koenig scrapped the first two),which was adopted into use by The Timesnewspaper in London two years later. This new“power press” provided a tremendous boost toprint production, raising daily output of printedsheets from hundreds to many thousands.Koenig’s invention ushered the graphic artsindustry into the Industrial Revolution.

50ROGER BACON13TH C ENGISH MATHEMATICIANBuilding on the work of his mentor, RobertGrosseteste, the English monk Roger Bacon madeadvances in the science of optics far beyond anylevel of knowledge enjoyed by his thirteenth centurycontemporaries, despite the fact that his work wasviolently opposed by his superiors in the Order ofFriars Minor. His observations concerning thebehaviour of light and mirrors and his application ofgeometry to optics provided later Renaissanceartists and scientists with an invaluable foundation.

52STEVE WOZNIAK20TH C AMERICAN COMPUTER ENGINEERWith a natural flair for tinkering and an innateunderstanding of electronics, Steve Wozniak built thefirst Apple Computer in 1975 and co-founded AppleComputer with Steve Jobs. Wozniak’s second generationmachine, the Apple II, held the position of Apple’sflagship product from its introduction in 1976 until1985, and fueled Apple’s tremendous growth throughthis period.

PHOTO COURTESY STEVE WOZNIAK

PHOTO COURTESY HEIDELBERG

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and mirrors. Descrip-tions of camera obscuraby numerous writers be-gan to appear with greatfrequency.

By the 18th and 19thcenturies, use of camera obscura was commonplace among artistsand illustrators. The Italian painter Giovanni Canale (Canaletto)was one in particular who relied extensively on this method forpreparing a sketch before painting. Indeed, both Talbot andNiepce were wishful but mediocre artists who turned to this deviceto improve their drawing techniques. Daguerre, on the other hand,was an artist with some ability, who employed it to produce largescale paintings which he displayed in his diorama theatre in Paris,the first of its kind. The objective of all three was to find a way to“fix” the images they were projecting.

THE FIX IS IN AND PHOTOGRAPHERS FLOURISHThe very first paper negative was produced not by Talbot or

Daguerre or Niepce, but by an 18th century German academicnamed Johann Heinrich Schulze. In 1727, Schulze concocted amixture of silver nitrate and chalk on paper on which he scribbledsome letters and left it exposed in sunlight. After several hours, awhite on black image appeared. Unfortunately, Schulze had noway to fix his images.

Finding a permanent fix was the biggest challenge for the earlypioneers of photography. Daguerre found his fix in 1837; Talbotgot his two years later with the help of his friend John Herschel,who, after twenty years of experimentation, had finally uncovereda method using hyposulphite of soda.

But once the daguerreotype was available, photography found“photographers”. The Bisson brothers, Louis and Auguste, openeda photo studio in Paris in 1841, quickly gaining fame for their mas-tery of the new technology. Gaspard-Felix Tournachon — betterknown as Nadar (derived from his nickname “tourne a dard”,meaning “bitter sting”) — set up shop in 1853.

Samuel Morse (inventor of Morse code), who had befriendedDaguerre in 1838, introduced the daguerreotype into the UnitedStates right after its release in France. One of his protegés wasMathew Brady, who would start his own studio in 1856 and whogained fame both for his historic shots of famous Americans andhis gritty pictures of the Civil War. In 1840 Alexander Wolcottopened the world’s first portrait studio in the U.S. Another Ameri-can, Felice Beato, became the first to photograph Korea, coveringthe Opium War in 1870.

However in Britain, Fox Talbot’s litigious behaviour served toimpede the spread of photography (although since he never tookout patents in Scotland, Scottish photographers were generatingfine work earlier than their counterparts in England and Wales).Richard Beard became the first portrait photographer in Britain in1841, purchasing the rights from Wolcott.

Roger Fenton took up photography after a visit to France in1851. His pictures of Russia, taken the next year, were some of the

Canaletto usedcamera obscuraextensively forpreliminary sketchesbefore painting.

42ROBERT METCALFE20TH C AMERICAN INVENTORThe true power of personal computing was genuinelyunleashed with the ability to connect personalcomputers together in a local area network. Thisinvention was Ethernet, the product of RobertMetcalfe while working at Xerox PARC in 1973, andwas driven at first by the need to connect a computerwith another new invention, the laser printer.Metcalfe went on to found networking giant 3ComCorporation (which lists Palm Computing among itsholdings) in 1979.

43EDOUARD MANET19TH C FRENCH PAINTERIn the 1860s, a group of young French artists hadgrown tired of traditional academic painting, seekinginstead to develop a new more lively style to expresstheir vision of truth in art. It was natural that EdouardManet would assume a leadership role in this new Im-pressionist movement. Manet dispensed with the oldmethod of building on a dark background and wentback to da Vinci’s technique of starting from white.His colors displayed a shocking intensity, aided by hisuse of pure pigments in tubes, just newly introduced.

44ALBRECHT DURER15TH C GERMAN ENGRAVER/ARTISTMaster of the woodcut, printer and publisher, mathe-matics scholar, prolific writer — Albrecht Durer wasthe most important figure of the German Renais-sance. A talented engraver who invented the cross-hatching technique of shading, he studied geometryin drawing and devised a method of etching squaresonto panes of glass to view and map perspective. Inoils, water colors or wood engravings, his art set anew standard in optical realism. In 1525 he wroteand published the first German mathematics book.

45JACQUES CHRISTOPHE LE BLON18TH C GERMAN ENGRAVER/PAINTERModern color printing was begun through the effortsof German-born Jacques Christophe Le Blon, apainter and engraver born in 1667. Le Blon, whosettled in France, devised the first three-colorprocess printing method around 1710 — even before the first systematic theory of color had beenworked out.

46ALBERT DICK19TH C AMERICAN GRAPHIC ARTS INDUSTRY LEADERGraphic arts owes much to experiments performed byAlbert Dick in 1884 with wax paper and a file. Dickenlisted the aid of Thomas Edison to invent themimeograph, introduced in 1887. Eventually theA.B. Dick Company would lead a mini-revolution inthe printing industry with the introduction of thesmall offset press in the early 1950s, a technologythat provided the masses with access to affordableshort run printing.

PHOTO COURTESY AB DICK COMPANY

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first to be seen in England, guaranteeing him instant notoriety. Hestarted what would become the Royal Photographic Society in1853, whose first patron was Queen Victoria, who was greatly en-amoured with the new art of photography.

One of the most progressive and noteworthy portrait photogra-phers of the time was Julia Margaret Cameron, who captured por-traits of many famous people of her generation, and who was oneof the first to experiment with soft focus.

In October, 1843 Anna Atkins became the first to publish aphotographically illustrated book, “British Algae: Cyanotype Im-pressions”, using the “blueprint” imaging technique which Her-schel had invented in 1842. And in 1860, Francis Frith began histour of the United Kingdom, photographing every town, villageand historical sight he could find, which he printed as postcards.Within a few years Frith was running one of the largest photo-graphic postcard companies in the world.

EASTMAN CREATES AN INDUSTRYPhotographic technologies evolved steadily in the fifty years

following Daguerre’s historic 1839 announcement. However thedaguerreotype would only enjoy a short lifespan of popularity;Archer’s collodion quickly became photographers’ choice once itwas released in 1851.

In September, 1871, the British Journal of Photography pub-lished an article written by Richard Maxwell, an English physicianand hobby photographer, which proposed a “dry” collodionprocess, whereby the sensitizing chemicals could be coated on aglass plate in a gelatin emulsion, instead of wet collodion. His ideasparked others to put this theory into production. This representeda revolutionary step in the development of photography, and bythe end of the decade dry plates were the standard. Alas, Maxwellnever patented his idea, and died in poverty.

But in America, an ambitious young bank clerk had taken aninterest in photography around 1877, purchasing his first photo-graphic outfit for $49. Like all photographers, he found the wetcollodion process messy, cumbersome and limiting, since it re-quired working close to a darkroom. After reading about the ex-perimental dry plate process, he started thinking about a way toautomate the manufacturing of these plates.

Two years later George Eastman had invented an emulsion-coating machine for mass producing dry plates; the next year hewas manufacturing and marketing them commercially. By 1881,the Eastman Dry Plate Company was a roaring success.

In 1882 Eastman began experimenting with different emulsionsupport bases other than glass. Before long he had created flexiblefilm, a machine to produce the film, and a roll film holder. Thefirst transparent film negative, Eastman American Film, waslaunched in 1885, another milestone in photography.

But the single most important event in the history of photogra-phy would occur three years later, in 1888. The introduction of thefamous Eastman “Kodak” camera — inexpensive, simple to use,with photo development included — suddenly made photographyavailable to anyone.

With the Kodak, and the $1 Brownie camera that followed in1900, the modern photography industry was born.

PHOTOGRAPHERS ANDTHEIR CAMERAS

The late 19th and 20 centuriesproduced a wealth of talentedphotographers who influenced theart, from Peter Emerson, HenryRobinson, Martin LaRoche andNancy Ford Cones to Man Ray,Victor Skrebneski, Eduard Ste-ichen, Francisco Scuvallo, YousufKarsh, Pulitzer Prize winner Nagao

Yasushi, Richard Avedon and Erich Salomon (who may lay claim tothe title of the first “papparazzi”).

But we must single out German-American photographer AlfredStieglitz, who, from 1890 on, probably did more than any other in-dividual to promote photography as an art on the same level asother arts; and likewise the great American photographer AnselAdams should be recognized not only for his magnificent land-scape images but also for his invention of the “zone” system.

Over the years, cameras have been produced in almost everyimaginable shape, size and format, from the “detective” cameras ofthe 1890s (shaped like bowties, hats and purses) to the monstroushorizontal copy cameras used by the printing trade. Space onlypermits us to mention a few of the more significant innovators andtheir inventions here, including:

• Thomas Sutton, for his single-lens reflex camera (1861)• Sam McKellen, a lightweight rack and pinion camera (1884)• halftone inventor Frederick Ives, for the first complete system

for natural color photography (1892)• Oscar Barnack, for the Leica, the first commercially available

35mm miniature camera (1924)• Victor Hasselblad, for the first camera with interchangeable

lenses, film magazines and viewfinders (1948)And photographers

will be forever indebt-ed to the work of LeopoldMannes and Leopold Godowsky,who in 1935 invented the first com-mercially successful 35mm color filmfor Eastman Kodak. But the scien-tific achievement of devisingKodachrome film dependedon knowledge accumulat-ed over many centuriesconcerning the nature ofthe visible spectrum itself.

Which is to say, it ne-cessitated the investigationand study of the fundamen-tal science of color…

GRAPHIC EXCHANGE 47

Erich Salomon gained notorietyfor his candid shots of eventsand dignitaries, using his tinynew 35mm Ermanox camera.

Commercial color photography was invented in 1935 with the development of

Kodachrome 35mm film for EastmanKodak by Mannes and Godowsky.

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48 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

THE YEAR WAS 1266, AND AN ENGLISH MONK NAMED ROGER

Bacon had a big problem. He had written a letter to Pope ClementIV in which he had proposed that the Church sponsor the under-taking of a collaborative effort to gather all the scientific and math-ematical knowledge available at the time and assemble this datainto an encyclopedia.

The trouble was that the Pope wasn’t accustomed to receivingrequests of this nature, and he misunderstood what Bacon wassuggesting. He thought this work existed already, and naturally hewanted to see it.

Obedient to a fault, Bacon knew he couldn’t disobey His Holi-ness, so he quickly started writing Opus maius (Great Work), Opusminus (Smaller Work), and Opus tertium (Third Work). There wasonly one other minor impediment — Bacon’s superiors at the Or-der of Friars Minor took a very dim view of his ideas, so he wasforced to carry out his project in secret, which he proceeded to dofor the next two years.

As bad luck would have it, the Pope died in 1268, putting adamper on Roger Bacon’s grand plan. Nonetheless, expanding onthe teachings of his mentor Roger Grosseteste, Bacon’s observa-tions on light, optics, astronomy and geometry laid the ground-work for scientists in succeeding centuries.

COLOR SCIENCE FINDS ITS FATHERSOne doesn’t usually equate graphics with scientific matters. But

there can be little doubt that the evolution of color science beganwith that famous scientist and intellectual giant of the 17th century,Isaac Newton.

For the graphics world, Newton’s most important discoverycame when he split light through a prism, revealing the visiblespectrum — and more important, demonstrated through the use ofa second prism that the spectrum could be recombined into whitelight. Newton deserves credit for being the father of modern color

science, but it should be noted in passing that he was not the firstto describe the phenomenon of light being separated by a prism.That honour probably goes to a Jesuit priest by the name of MarcoAntonio de Dominis who wrote about this effect in 1611.

The famous German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe tookexception to Newton’s seven-color interpretation of the colorwheel and spent twenty years fine tuning his own theories on col-or, which he published in 1810 under the title Farbenlehre (ColorTheory). Goethe focused on the effects of different light sourcesand the way the eye responded to color under various conditions,striving to define the perfect balance of color harmony and con-trast; his color wheel was constructed of only six colors. Yet evenas Goethe was publishing what he considered to be his greatestwork, another German was postulating what would be the firstmodern model for color.

Philipp Runge was an artist who was fascinated with the per-ception of color. In 1810 he developed the first three-dimensionalcolor wheel, the forerunner to today’s color system. Runge’s effortswould be reconstructed in the 1930s by Bauhaus master JohannesItten, who contributed the concepts of “color chords” and the“Seven Contrasts”.

Meanwhile in America, Moses Harris, the 18th century engraver,had defined the concepts of primary colors (red-blue-yellow) andsecondary colors (orange-green-purple) even before the Euro-peans. In 1776, Harris produced his Natural System of Colors, inwhich he showed an 18-hue color wheel.

COLORIMETRY BY OBSERVATIONIn 1839 in France, Michel-Eugene Chevreul, director of the Go-

belins tapestry works in Paris, published his famous Law of Simul-taneous Contrast of Colors, in which he showed how the percep-tion of colors changed, depending on their juxtaposition. This the-ory had a monumental effect not only on the way yarns were dyed

Isaac Newton’s seven-color model, 1666 Johanne Goethe’s six-hue color wheel (Farbenlehre, 1810)

The 18-color wheel by Moses Harris (Natural Spectrum of Colors, 1776)

Color ScieCOLOR IS IN THE EYEOF THE BEHOLDER

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and woven from that time forward but also on theories of art, andparticularly the Impressionist movement that followed later thatcentury.

Thirty years after Chevreul, Louis Ducos du Hauron proposedthe fundamental principles of the subtractive color theory. At firsthis work would affect the evolution of color photography (and infact du Hauron produced one of the very first color photographicimages); later it would be instrumental in the development ofprocess color printing.

It is James Clerk Maxwell who is credited by most historianswith the first color photo in 1861; however Maxwell’s shiningachievement is his theory of the electromagnetic spectrum, inwhich he set out the order of light waves by wavelength.

But as the 19th century drew to a close, colorimetry — thequantitative and objective measurement of color — was still verymuch a compilation of individual and subjective observations,lacking one unifying methodology to bind it together.

COLOR — HUE,VALUE AND CHROMAThe first step toward creating a system for color measurement

came in 1880, when Joseph Lovibond, a British brewer, devisedthe first colorimetry scale in order to find a formula for maintaininga consistent color in the beer he produced.

In 1879 Ogden Rood published Modern Chromatics, which inEurope quickly became the Bible of color. A copy of this bookfound its way into the hands of an American artist and art profes-sor at the Massachusetts Normal Art School named Albert Munsell,who became so interested in the subject that he began devotinghis attention to the formulation of a wholly scientific approach tothe nature and constructs of color. A visit to the Gobelins and a re-view of Chevreul’s papers in the library of the Beaux Arts in 1887immersed Munsell further in his subject.

The more he studied the nature of color, the more Munsell con-cluded that it was necessary to find a way to define color in moreprecise terms. By 1898 he had formulated a new theoretical modelwhich he felt would finally express a comprehensive method to de-scribe, catalogue and communicate the essence of all visible color.

In 1810, German artist Phillip Runge devised the first three-dimensional color model, shown above.

nce

37EDWIN LAND20TH C AMERICAN COLOR SCIENTISTFamous for founding Polaroid Corporation, theapplication of the principles of polarized light tosunglasses and other products, and especiallythe invention of instant photography with thePolaroid Land camera, Edwin Land’s mostimportant contribution to graphics is arguably hisstudy of perceptual color, summarized in theretinex theory for the mechanism of colorperception.

38MARTIN LUTHER16TH C GERMAN RELIGIOUS ACTIVISTWhen in 1517 Martin Luther decided to take hisobjections to the Church’s indulgence system tothe people, he used the press to spread histhoughts, thus becoming the first person toexploit the power of the press for political ends.Luther also capitalized on the printing press bypublishing his German translation of the Bible,which served to solidify his break with Rome andlaunch the Reformation.

39CYRUS CURTIS19TH C AMERICAN PUBLISHERThe modern publishing model based on incomecentred on advertising revenue began with thesuccess of the Ladies’ Home Journal, launchedin 1883 and built into a powerhouse publicationby Cyrus Curtis and his wife Louisa Knapp Curtis.Curtis Publishing became a giant in its fieldthrough the acquisition of such periodicals andnewspapers as the Saturday Evening Post, thePhiladelphia Press, the New York Evening Post,and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

40JAMES RUSSELL20TH C AMERICAN INVENTORIn 1965 James Russell, frustrated with vinylrecords’ lack of durability, decided to find a bettersolution. Russell devised a method of recordingbinary data onto a photosensitive disc which couldbe read by a laser. It took twenty years to convincethe recording industry that the compact disc wascommercially viable, but today CD-ROMs are usedextensively for common graphics utilities like dataarchiving and data delivery. The compact disc alsopaved the way for the development of DVD.

41 FRANK MUNSEY19TH C AMERICAN COMMERCIAL PUBLISHERIn 1893 Frank Munsey produced the first maga-zine illustrated entirely with photomechanicaltechniques using halftone technology. At thesame time he set off the “Ten-Cent MagazineRevolution” by lowering the newstand cover priceof his magazine to 10 cents, 60% below the stan-dard 25 cents. By the turn of the century Mun-sey’s Magazine had more readers than any othermagazine in the world; it was published continu-ously until 1957.

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Munsell’s three-dimensional system would become the basis ofhow we now define color. It revolved around specifying the visi-ble spectrum in terms of hue, chroma (saturation) and value (light-ness). In April, 1905, he presented his theory to the New EnglandCotton Manufacturers Association, and that same year he publishedhis preliminary concepts in a paper called A Color Notation.

Over the next few years, interest in Munsell’s color theoriesgrew and by 1911 he was engaged in discussions of hissystem and tests of his photometer (which he hadpatented in 1901) with the Bureau of Standards inWashington, D.C. In 1915 Munsell published theMunsell Atlas of Color. Later that year the Bu-reau created a new division for colorimetry,headed by Irwin Priest.

Although Albert Munsell died in 1918(just a few months after the incorporationof the A. H. Munsell Color Company), boththe pursuit of a scientific system for colormeasurement which he had spearheadedand the Munsell Color System which hehad created began gathering steam, pro-pelled in large part by Priest’s continuingstudies at the Bureau of Standards.

It would take another thirteen years butfinally, in 1931, the International Commission on Illumination (bet-ter known by its French acronym, CIE) approved the first interna-tional standards for colorimetry, standard light sources A, B and C,a standard observer, and standard conditions for illuminating andviewing color samples. Munsell’s contribution to the establishmentof these standards was incalculable; at last the graphics industryhad a scientific basis for determining and measuring color.

The desktop color model (CIELAB), the concept of hue, satura-tion and lightness to describe colors of the visible spectrum, thespectrophotometer — for all these we must thank Albert Munsellfor his pioneering efforts in the field of modern color science.There is an irony in the fact that, in the end, color measurementwas standardized not by a scientist, but by an artist.

LAND PROVES THAT COLOR IS IN THE BRAINA final note to color perception was added by Edwin Land. Although best-known for his invention of the Polaroid camera,

Land demonstrated in 1959 that color is not entirely dependent onthe classic Newtonian interpretation of wavelengths, and that thehuman brain can re-interpret what the eye sees to “assign” colorswhich are not actually there. When the eye “sees”, it also transmitsinformation to the brain’s visual system concerning shape, depth,texture, etc. The brain reads clues provided by the eye and can re-construct the full gamut of color of an image, even if many ofthose colors are absent. This is known as the retinex theory.

Having finally gained an understanding of color perception andreproduction, and bolstered by sophisticated machinery for captur-ing, manipulating and manufacturing words and images, 20th cen-tury graphics was now ready to undergo the final great transition…

In 1931, the InternationalCommission on Illumination

(CIE), accepted and approvedcolorimetry standards based

on the Munsell Color Systemof hue, chroma and value.

35ALAN SHUGART20TH C AMERICAN INVENTORPersonal computer systems would be useless withoutdigital storage technologies such as the floppy andthe external hard drive. The clear king of digitalstorage innovations is Alan Shugart, a developer ofdisk drives for IBM in the 1960s who was theinventor of the floppy disk (in 1972) and the firstexternal hard drive (the Winchester, 1980). Theiconoclastic Shugart founded Seagate Technologiesin 1979.

34BILL GATES20TH C AMERICAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Bill Gates’ influence on graphics can be measurednot by his contribution to BASIC programming, or hisapplication software development (Word, Excel,Office, Publisher, etc.), or even his role in buildingand leading the world’s richest corporation,Microsoft, but by his implementation of the graphicaluser interface into the PC-based world of computingthrough Windows. Love him or hate him, Gates hasbeen and will continue to be a dominant force inshaping the tools of graphic communications.

33ALVY RAY SMITH20TH C AMERICAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERCo-founder of Pixar, founder of Altamira Software in1991, Academy Award winner Alvy Ray Smith wrotethe first 24-bit color paint program in 1977, afterassisting Richard Shoup with the development ofSuperPaint in 1974. In 1994 Altamira was absorbedby Microsoft, where Smith is now employed as agraphics software architect.

32LOUIS DAGUERRE19TH C FRENCH INVENTORAlthough the work of Niepce and Talbot precededLouis Daguerre’s invention of the daguerreotype, in1839 a deal was struck between Daguerre and theFrench government to release his new technology tothe world at no cost. Thus Daguerre’s fame wassecured and he was hailed as the inventor ofphotography (although mysteriously, the process waspatented in England just five days before the officialpublic announcement in France).

36GEORGE BOOLE19TH C BRITISH MATHEMATICIANThe fundamental construction of computerprogramming owes much to the work ofmathematician George Boole, who inventedmathematical logic and the use of logical operatorswhich bears his name. It was Boole who conceived ofseparating mathematical symbols from operations;Boolean algebra, which Boole developed in 1854 ina paper entitled “Laws of Thought”, can be found inalmost any piece of software code.

PHOTO COURTESY MICROSOFT

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SEYBOLD ADNEW FILM

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THERE LIVED IN SCOTLAND IN THE 16TH CENTURY A MAN

regarded as a sorcerer, who inspired a sense of fear and mistrustamong those who knew him. But John Napier, eighth Laird of Mer-chiston, was simply a man very much ahead of his time.

Napier is renowned in mathematical circles for his “Napier’sbones” — strips of wood or bone bearing the numbers from 0 to 9with multiples of each digit underneath. This device comprised thefirst calculator. But it was Napier’s invention of logarithms (aidedby his long time associate, a fellow named Briggs) which wouldprovide the base upon which Isaac Newton would develop someof his most valuable scientific research.

IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK — IS IT A COMPUTER?The computer is a complex ma-

chine, a combination of electronics,mathematics and science. Many pin-point the birth of computing to a weav-ing loom built in France in 1802 byJoseph Jacquard, which operated onpunch cards that controlled the order inwhich various colored yarns were wo-ven into patterns. While it’s true thatthe punch cards of the Jacquard loomrepresented the first form of “program-

ming”, the history of his invention may actually be traced back tomore than fifty years earlier.

In 1738, the city of Paris was astounded by a demonstration oftechnology the likes of which had never been seen before. A cre-ative inventor named Jacques Vaucanson had constructed a gildedmechanical duck which walked, ate, swam, and in almost all re-spects behaved like a real duck. The cleverness of Vaucanson’sdevice did not escape the attention of Louis XV or his minister ofindustry.

The King’s representatives approached Vaucanson with a pro-posal: would he turn his inventive genius to the difficulties beset-ting the French silkweaving industry, which was suffering from thecompetition of cheaper wares manufactured in England and theFar East?

Vaucanson rose to the challenge and in 1750 unveiled a newloom which operated with a punched paper roll. Each roll,through a series of predetermined holes, would instruct the loomwhich yarn to feed next. By designing a punched roll for standardpatterns, weaving could be automated and production increasedimmeasurably.

Alas, the weavers of France wholeheartedly rejected the ideathat handweaving could be replaced by such a machine, for that

meant less value placed on their artistry, and less money for theguild. Eventually, Vaucanson gave up trying to modernize the in-dustry and bequeathed his invention to the state.

Vaucanson’s loom wound up in a museum in Paris, where itwas discovered by none other than Joseph Jacquard, who bor-rowed it, repaired it, revised the roll system in favour of cards, andshowed it to Napoleon — who instantly recognized its value andawarded Jacquard a lifetime honorarium for his remarkable inven-tion. Over the next few decades, the punch card system was grad-ually adapted to a variety of industries.

THE GRANDFATHER OF THE COMPUTERIn England, a rather eccentric but brilliant mathe-

matician named Charles Babbage came up with aconcept around 1832 for what he called a “differ-ential engine”, a device which mergedJacquard’s punch card system with a mechan-ical conglomeration of rods and levers togenerate arithmetical calculations. Babbage developed his idea fur-ther and in 1834 lobbied the British government for money tobuild a second generation version which he called the “analytic

engine”. This machinewould have a “store”,where data was returnedafter each operation, anda “mill”, where calcula-tions would be per-formed — or in modernterminology, a centralprocessing unit and aninternal memory.

Unfortunately, anddespite the support ofLord Byron’s daughter,

Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace, Babbage never succeeded in con-structing his invention, and died without ever seeing his workcome to fruition. Nonetheless, we must regard Charles Babbage asthe grandfather of modern computing.

PUNCH CARDS AND HEAD COUNTSSeveral years later in 1885, the head of the United States gov-

ernment department responsible for managing the census, Dr. JohnBillings found himself facing a sizeable problem.

The population of the U.S. was growing at a phenomenal rate,and he knew that the government’s manual system of gatheringdata would be inadequate to handle the upcoming 1890 census.

The punch card system used to con-trol the weft and warp of yarns inJoseph Jacquard’s loom, invented in1801, was the first commercial im-plementation of “programming”.

Charles Babbage,grandfather of themodern computer

Babbage conceived the Analytical Engine in1834, the first example of a design whichincorporated the ideas of internal memo-ry and a central processing unit.

DigitalTechnoOF PUNCH CARDS, VACUUM TUBES,BINARY THEORY AND LOGARITHMS

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Billings, a well-educated man who had travelledin Europe, recalled the punch card concept, whichhe thought might be applied to resolve the situation.He directed his young protegé, Herman Hollerith, todesign a machine utilizing this system which wouldallow information to be captured faster andmore efficiently. Hollerith built a punch cardtabulating machine that revolutionized the cen-sus procedure, and allowed him to start his owncompany, which he named the Computing-Tab-ulating-Recording Company. As names go, C-T-Rlacked panache, and in 1924, it was changed toInternational Business Machines.

THE BIRTH OF THE DIGITAL AGEAs we begin the 21st century,

digital technologies have assumeda central role in the creation andproduction of graphics. Modernpersonal computing is the prod-uct of the efforts of many individ-uals, a few of which we will men-tion here.

The inventor of the computer is really a triumvirate of menwho worked independently during the period from 1936 to 1940.

Konrad Zuse’s Z-1, builtin 1936 in Germany, wasthe first prototype of a truebinary electromechanicalcomputer; but George Stib-itz, working in the U.S., puttogether a binary micro-computer in 1937, and

Herman Hol-lerith adapted

the punch cardsystem to invent

the tabulatingmachine — and

then foundedthe company

that would be-come IBM.

The world’s first binary electro-mechanical computer — the Z-1,built by Konrad Zuse in 1936.

Jacques Vaucanson’s automaton,an amazing mechanical duckbuilt in 1738, could walk, swimand “eat”. It so impressedLouis XV’s finance ministerthat Vaucanson was asked toapply his prodigious inven-tive talents to rescuing thedying French silkweavingtrade. Vaucanson responded

by building a loom which au-tomated weaving through the

use of a roll punch which con-trolled the yarns to make patterns —

the first machine program. Unfortunately it wasrejected outright by the French silkweavers guild.

ABC (Atanasoff Berry Computer), 1940

ologies 31 PAUL CÉZANNE19TH C FRENCH PAINTERMoody, reclusive and ridiculed during most of hislifetime, Paul Cézanne nonetheless influencedmany 20th century artists, including Picasso andMatisse. Early on he was a member of the Impres-sionist movement; later he established his ownunique style, breaking all convention, using unusualcombinations of color to embue landscapes and stilllifes with a special vitality. Cézanne was probablythe first modern anti-establishment artist and hisattitude led younger artists to virtually deify him.

27ALFRED STIEGLITZ19TH C GERMAN-AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERLeader of the Photo-Secessionist group ofphotographers and renowned for his captivatingimages of every day life, Alfred Stieglitz was thefirst to champion the notion of photography as art,a controversial concept at the turn of the 20thcentury. Today many regard him as the “patronsaint of straight photography”.

28CLAUDE GARAMOND16TH C FRENCH FONT DESIGNERBorn in 1490, Claude Garamond was the first typespecialist, apprenticing under the Parisian punch-cutter and printer, Antoine Augereau. In the 1520s,having set up shop in Paris with the idea of supply-ing type design, punchcutting and typefounding serv-ices to other printers and publishers (making himthe first prepress house), he landed his first big con-tract, a commission to supply type to the publishingfirm of the famous scholar-printer, Robert Estienne.His first roman typeface appeared in 1530.

29JOHN NAPIER16TH C SCOTTISH MATHEMATICIAN“Napier’s bones” — rectangular strips of wood orbone with figures marked down one side, eachdivided into ten squares with a digit from 0 to 9 inthe top square — are the legacy of mathematicianJohn Napier, who in the 16th century devised thefirst principles of logarithms, without which moderncomputer programming would not be possible.Napier invented the decimal point and paved theway for advances by Kepler and Newton.

30VICTOR HASSELBLAD20TH C SWEDISH INVENTORVictor Hasselblad’s enormous contribution tomodern photography was his invention of theHasselblad camera in 1948, a modularphotographic system which incorporatedinterchangeable lenses, film magazines andviewfinders. Even today the Hasselblad is the RollsRoyce of image capture — NASA made sure thatevery Apollo flight was equipped with “Blads”.

PHOTO COURTESY HASSELBLAD CAMERA

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John Atanasoff (with his assistant CliffBerry) assembled an electronic digitalcomputer in 1940 (known as the ABCcomputer) that would spark thefeverish development of megalithiccomputers in the 1940s and 1950s.

It was Presper Eckert and JohnMauchly who in 1946 took the seedsof Atanasoff’s rudimentary inventionand produced the first mainframeswhich dominated the early days of the industry. However theywould lose their boasting rights to the computer’s invention toAtanasoff and Berry in a titanic 1973 court battle.

THE POST-WAR YEARSDuring the forty years after World War II a succession of inven-

tions mark the trail of progress in digital technologies leading upto the desktop publishing revolu-tion of the 1980s.

A short list would include thedevelopment of the first program-ming language in 1946 by GraceMurray Hopper; William Shock-ley’s 1947 invention of the transis-tor; the Williams tube and thefirst stored computer program,created by Frederick Williams andTom Kilburn in 1948; and Jay

Eckert and Mauchly, developers of theENIAC and UNIAC mainframes.

The first transistor, invented byWilliam Shockley in 1947.

20GIAMBATISTA BODONI18TH-19TH C ITALIAN PRINTER/FONT DESIGNERSubtle thin straight serifs combined with bold verticals,delicate hairlines accentuating heavy strokes — this wasthe trademark font design of Giambatista Bodoni,rightfully regarded as the father of modern roman type.Bodoni’s influence on 19th century printing was sogreat that after 1805 few printers even cast old styletype; today’s popular modern serif typefaces still carryhis mark.

21 TIM BERNERS-LEE20TH C AMERICAN INTERNET DEVELOPERThe World Wide Web, URLs, HTTP, HTML — these areall the invention of Tim Berners-Lee. In 1978 he wrote amultitasking operating system; in 1980 he conceived“Enquire”, a program for storing information that wouldform the conceptual basis for the World Wide Web. His1989 proposal to create a global hypertext project andhis creation of the first WWW server and first WYSIWYGclient set in motion the Internet as we know it.

22PAUL BRAINERD20TH C AMERICAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERBetween 1985, when he founded Aldus Corporationand coined the term “desktop publishing”, and1994, when he merged Aldus with Adobe, PaulBrainerd was instrumental in launching the desktoprevolution. The 1985 introduction of PageMaker, thefirst desktop page layout and assembly application,was an instant success and drove the replacement ofexpensive proprietary page makeup systems bypersonal computers.

23OSCAR BARNACK20TH C GERMAN INVENTORThe world’s first 35mm miniature camera, designedby Oscar Barnack, became commercially available in1924. The Leica’s wide aperture lenses, permittingindoor exposures using available light, spurred theart of first moviemaking, and subsequently photojour-nalism; in fact, Barnack’s radical invention allowedSalomon to be the first “candid cameraman”. Bar-nack actually built a prototype of the Leica in 1913,and if not for World War I, it would have been pro-duced and released years earlier.

24PABLO PICASSO20TH C SPANISH ARTISTChild prodigy, inventor of Cubism, and a dominant(and domineering) personality, Pablo Picasso, alongwith Matisse, was a towering figure in 20th centuryart. But unlike Matisse, Picasso discovered how tocapitalize on the American hunger for “famous art”,becoming an international icon. He gloried in hisnotoriety and ensured that his personal stamp wasemblazoned on everything he did. His style evolvedas the century progressed, and in each case it wasfollowed and copied by his peers.

25ALDUS MANUTIUS16TH C ITALIAN PRINTER/SCHOLARNamesake of Brainerd’s desktop software company,Aldus Manutius founded the Aldine Press in 1495,funded by the prince of Carpi. Adhering to the termsof his deal, Manutius proceeded to devote himself toprinting works by the great Greek writers, from Aristo-tle to Demosthenes. He is famous for his invention ofitalic type in 1501, along with having devised theportable book. Manutius was fortunate in hiring for-mer goldsmith Francesco Griffo, who proved to be apunchcutter and type designer of considerable skill.

26JAN VAN EYCK15TH C FLEMISH PAINTERJan van Eyck, credited with perfecting oil-basedpaints, was a true pioneer in painting perspective.His art was astonishingly realistic for its time; his oilshad a magical sense of depth and amazing glazes.Born around 1390, his influence would inspire thegreat Renaissance painters who came after him, fromBosch to Leonardo. In addition, his trip to Spain in1428 gave birth to a whole school of great Portu-guese painters. Last but not least, his oil formulasprovided Gutenberg with the base for mixing his inks.

PHOTO COURTESY TIM BERNERS-LEE

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Forrester and his random access magnetic core memory in 1949. The year 1959 marked the invention of the monolithic integrat-

ed circuit by Jack Kilby, working at Texas Instruments, at the sametime as Robert Noyce was developing a planar version at FairchildSemiconductors. Shortly thereafter came the refinement of COBOL[Common Business Oriented Language] in 1960 by Joe Wegstein.

The 1970s was a fruitful period for digital developments: dy-namic random access memory [DRAM], invented at Intel by JohnReed in 1970; the Atari computer, the brainchild of the legendaryNolan Bushnell in 1972; the fun-damental software engineeringalgorithms published in 1973 byDon Knuth, which became theBible of computer programming;the first personal computer kit,the Scelbi-8H, offered by NatWadsworth in 1974, as well asthe first successful marketing of amicrocomputer, the Altair, by EdRoberts in 1975 (who hired BillGates to write his programming);the floppy disk, developed in1976 by Alan Shugart (who would also introduce the first harddrive in 1980, the Winchester); and, of course, the milestoneachievements at Xerox PARC, which included among its many in-novations the invention of Ethernet networking in 1973 by RobertMetcalfe and Chuck Thacker’s 1976 co-development (with ButlerLampson) of the server.

When Noyce and Gordon Moore(who conceived Moore’s Law, whichstated that processing power would dou-ble every 18 months), together with AndyGrove, launched Intel Corporation in 1968,it set the stage for a new generation ofcomputers — smaller, faster, less expen-sive and more easily re-engineered toadapt to new digital innovations. Arguablythe most important event in personal computing was the creationof the first microprocessor in 1971, the Intel 4004, developed byFagin, Hoff and Mazor under the direction of Bob Noyce.

HOMAGE TO THE ROOTS OF BINARY THEORY Over the past fifty years digital technologies have had more

impact on the way graphics are created and manufactured thanany other single influence in history.

But if we take a step back and examine which individualswere most responsible for the development of binary theory andthe invention of the mathematical formulae which make up thelanguage of these technologies, three names stand out.

The first is John Napier, inventor of the decimal place, who wedescribed at the outset. Second is the British mathematicianGeorge Boole, who between 1847 and 1859 articulated the funda-mentals of formal logic, Boolean algebra, and differential equationsin his trio of historic papers, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic(1847), Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854) and Treatiseon Differential Equations (1859).

Third, and probably foremost, is mathematician Alan Turing,also British. In 1936 he formulated the basic principles of binarycomputing with his theory of the “Universal Turing Machine” in adissertation entitled On Computable Numbers. Years before com-puters were invented, Turing spelled out the essentials of the“stored program” concept and provided a simple but radical in-sight — symbols representing instructions are no different in kindfrom symbols representing numbers.

With the fundamentals of computing more or less firmly inplace, the stage was set to apply these technologies to the busi-ness of producing graphic communications. But as the 1980s be-gan, few would anticipate the revolution about to take place…

The first microcomputer kit onthe market was Nat

Wadsworth’s Scelbi-8H.

It was Grace Murray Hopper (left) who devised the first programming lan-guage — and found the first “bug”, which she dutifully logged and taped toher log report in 1945 (right).

Robert Noyce, inven-tor of the integrated

circuit and co-founderof Intel Corporation.

18 TIM GILL20TH C AMERICAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERQuark founder, inventor of Desktop ColorSeparations (DCS), and chief architect ofQuarkXPress, Tim Gill was writing wordprocessing software for Apple computers in1981, then created QuarkXPress, which enteredthe desktop market in 1987. Almost overnightQuarkXPress was adopted as the de factostandard for high end page layout and hasremained the cornerstone of professional desktopdesign ever since.

19 THOMAS EDISON19TH C AMERICAN INVENTOROwner of 1093 patents, inventor extraordinaire ThomasEdison’s work had an impact on almost every scientificfield, including graphics. He helped Sholes with thedesign of the typewriter, co-developed the mimeographwith Dick, and worked with Eastman’s film to invent amotion picture camera. He also discovered “Edison’sEffect” and invented the “electric pen”, forerunner ofthe memograph. And of course, he put electricity togood use with the light bulb.

PHOTO COURTESY QUARK INC.

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56 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

WHEN A MANUFACTURER OF PUBLISHING SYSTEMS FOR NEWSPA-pers decided to close its Seattle plant in 1984, it left one of thecompany’s vice presidents pondering over another means of gain-ful employment.

But Paul Brainerd had recognized that personal computerswere quickly becoming viable business tools. His experience withpagination systems in the newspaper industry, together with whathe had learned about developments in software which were hap-pening to the south in sunny California, led him to the conclusionthat it wouldn’t be long before personal computers would be capa-ble of handling page assembly better and more easily than expen-sive proprietary systems.

So, gambling his life savings, he gathered together a handful ofengineers from Atex, his ex-employer, andstarted Aldus Corporation (named after Al-dus Manutius, the fifteenth century printerwho invented the portable book). Along theway, Brainerd coined the term “desktoppublishing”. In 1985, Aldus released Page-Maker, the first software for page assemblyon the desktop.

Nine years later, having built Aldus fromscratch into a $250 million a year softwarecompany, Brainerd sold the company toAdobe Systems. But in that short ten yearspan, the desktop publishing revolution hadswept through the graphics industry.

“AS WE MAY THINK” — THE FUTURE UNFOLDSThe list of individuals who contributed to a veritable tsunami of

desktop technologies is long. Perhaps the most appropriate startingpoint is to recall an article which appeared in the July, 1945 issueof Atlantic Monthly.

In that issue, in an article entitled As We May Think, VannevarBush, head scientific advisor to the White House, published his

thoughts on the future of computertechnologies. Besides holding a key po-sition as consultant to the President,Bush had made his mark by inventingthe Differential Analyzer in 1930, ananalog computer hailed at the time as amajor breakthrough in computing. In AsWe May Think Bush envisioned a fu-ture where information storage and re-trieval would be controlled on an indi-vidual basis through what he labelled a

“Memex”, a system with many of the attributes of today’s comput-ers. However, being aligned to the analog world, and without ben-efit of familiarity with binary digital thinking, Bush pictured theMemex as a system housed within a desk, where an individualwould sit, retrieving and sending data from his desktop.

(Around that same time, two aspiring entrepreneurs in Califor-nia were about to incorporate a business they had originallylaunched in 1938 from a garage in Palo Alto. The company thatDavid Packard and William Hewlett founded would grow to be-come a dominant force in personal computing products.)

THE GUI STARTS A REVOLUTIONOne person whose imagination was fired by As We May Think

was Doug Engelbart. Almost twenty years after reading Bush’s vi-sion of the future, Engelbart delivered what would prove to be thefirst component for an industry yet to be born. Using a block ofwood, a micro-switch button, and some small metal wheels, he in-vented a device for graphically controlling the position of a cursoron a computer screen — in fact he patented it in 1964 under thename “The X-Y Positioning Indicator for a Display System”. Todaythat rather awkward piece of nomenclature has, of course, beenabbreviated and we simply refer to it as a “mouse”. (Note: a fewyears earlier, Swedish inventor Håkan Lans had come up with theprecursor of the mouse, which he called a digitizer.) In 1964, itcost Engelbart about $US80,000 to custom build such a device.

Make no mistake aboutone thing: the essence of thedesktop revolution was con-tained in one pivotal develop-ment — the graphical user in-terface, or GUI. In December,1968, Engelbart would stunthe California scientific com-munity by demonstrating forthe first time a GUI on a com-puter screen using a mouse,as well as showing collapsiblewindows and menus, copying and pasting text, and linked termi-nals, all via remote computing performed with his assistant sittingforty miles away. His futuristic vision of personal computing wouldblossom a few years later at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center.

Although Engelbart must undoubtedly be awarded full creditfor pioneering the development of the graphical user interface, itwas actually computer graphics icon Ivan Sutherland who de-signed the first GUI in 1963 when he wrote a software programcalled Sketchpad which allowed real time graphics manipulation

The desktop publishing revolu-tion began in earnest in 1985

with the release of Aldus Page-Maker, the first desktop page

layout application, written ini-tially for the Macintosh.

The “Memex” was Vannevar Bush’s1945 concept of computing in the

future. His model was a doublepedestal desk and the work area of

the Memex was the “desktop”.

Engelbart’s first mouse was constructed froma wooden block, a microswitch and two met-al wheels, one running in each direction.

DesktopHOW THE MAC AND THE GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACECHANGED THE GRAPHICS INDUSTRY

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on a TX-2 computer. Sutherland went on to co-found (with DaveEvans) the Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation, a well-known digital graphics firm of the 1970s; he also co-developed“virtual reality”.

BIRTH OF THE MACINTOSH For all intents and purposes, desktop was born in the 1970s at

Xerox PARC (see sidebar). But it was Steve Jobs who took the con-cepts which the PARC team had generated and turned them into acommercial reality by spearheading Apple’s development of theMacintosh, introduced in 1984. Yet the Mac would never havebeen created if not for the contributions of three other individualsof historical significance.

Jobs’ buddy and Apple co-founderSteve Wozniak was the technical brainbehind the Apple I and II, buildingthem virtually from scratch in 1975 and1976. Sales of the Apple II would sus-tain the company for its first twelveyears of existence.

Wozniak showed off his technological achievements to MikeMarkkula in 1976. This ex-Intel marketing exec instantly recog-nized the Apple’s engineering brilliance, and early in 1977 hadlined up the financing (part personal, part bank guarantee) thatwould allow the two Steves to go forward.

But it was finding a “killer app” for theApple computer that really set things on fire.In 1979, Dan Bricklin wrote VisiCalc for theApple, the first desktop spreadsheet program.By declining to patent it, Bricklin lost the op-portunity to make himself very wealthy.Nonetheless, between 1979 and 1983 VisiCalcgenerated huge revenues for both Bricklin’s

The Apple IIcomputer, createdin 1976

The Apple Macintoshgraphical user interface,

unveiled in 1984.

The Legacy ofXerox PARC

For anyone with passing familiarity with desktop publishinghistory, the legacy of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center isclassic technofolklore. Funded by mountains of cash gener-ated by photocopier sales, Xerox PARC began in 1970 as afacility for creating “the architecture of information.”

It quickly attracted some of the brightest minds in the in-dustry, who were allowed to let their imaginations roamfree to envision the future of information technologies.Andthey did exactly that.

Throughout a decade of incredible invention, the PARCteam (some of whom are pictured here) created and/or re-fined the personal computer, the mouse, the graphical userinterface, on-screen icons, windows, pulldown menus, cut-and-paste text editing, the WYSIWYG bitmapped display,the laser printer, laser typesetting, Ethernet networking,the server, the page description language, and object-orient-ed programming.What is even more amazing is the factthat at the time Xerox management didn’t understand thesignificance of any of these creations. In the 1980s each ofthese inventions would be developed and brought to mar-ket by a company other than Xerox.

Chief scientist at the PARC was Alan Kay, who wrote oneof the first object-oriented applications, SmallTalk. But the

chief architect of the personal computerwas Butler Lampson (who, in fact, first usedthe term in 1973). Lampson drove develop-ment of the Alto, a microcomputer whichbore a remarkable resemblance to today’sPCs, and which incorporated the mouse,GUI, icons, menus, windowing capability andhigh resolution pixel-based display withwhich we are all now familiar. His co-devel-opers included Doug Engelbart (originatorof the mouse and the GUI), Chuck Thacker

(who designed Alto’s system), and Charles Simonyi (design-er of the Bravo WYSIWYG interface, later the basis for Mi-crosoft Word).The Alto’s fatal flaw was that it was built be-fore the invention of the microprocessor, depending insteadon integrated circuit technology which rendered its costtoo high to compete with microcomputers.

With Thacker, Lampson created another specialized com-puter, the dedicated server; and with Gary Starkweather(who invented the laser printer at Xerox) and Ron Rider,Lampson produced the first high quality laser type.

Robert Metcalfe, who would later found networking giant3Com, was another PARC member; his most well-knowncontribution was the invention of Ethernet. Richard Shoupmoved to Palo Alto to continue working on his pet project,the creation of a graphics software application (SuperPaintin 1974), which he succeeded in doing with Alvy Ray Smith(who would take away his research and create the first 24-bit paint program in 1977).

And of course it was at Xerox PARC where John Warnockbegan work on the creation of an open architecture pagedescription language, culminating in the 1985 release ofAdobe PostScript, the linchpin of desk-top publishing.

When the Apple team of Steve Jobs, BillAtkinson and Jef Raskin paid a visit to thePARC in 1979 (which Xerox permittedin return for the privilege of buying intoApple’s public stock offering), they wentaway amazed and inspired by the look,feel and design of the Alto — and theApple Macintosh was conceived.

The Altocomputer,created in1974

Apple’s1983 Lisa

computer,the first to

incorporatea GUI.

John Warnock

Alan Kay

Charles Simonyi

Doug Engelbart

Butler Lampson

Alvy Ray Smith

Gary Starkweather

Robert Metcalfe

This shot shows Engelbart on an overhead screen delivering his historicaddress to the Association for Computer Machinery Conference in SanFrancisco in December, 1968. It marked the the first public demonstrationof the basic elements of personal computing, including the mouse andgraphical user interface.

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58 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

company, VisiCorp, and Apple.But despite emerging as the leading vendor of personal com-

puters in the late 1970s, Apple would soon find itself with compe-tition it couldn’t ignore. After IBM’s dynamic president, Frank Cary,saw VisiCalc for the first time, he would ask the question at everyexecutive meeting thereafter: “Where’s my Apple?”

Enter Bill Gates.

IBM TAKES IT TO THE PEOPLE After Bill Lowe sold Cary on his ability to

deliver a personal computer in 1980, IBM’stechnical team went shopping for an operat-ing system. They went first to Microsoft,where Gates sent them off to see Gary Kildall,who at that time owned the dominant OS forsmall computers, called CP/M.

In one of the more lamentable businessmeetings in the history of computing, Kil-dall brushed off IBM’s advances. In frustra-tion they went back to Gates.

Seizing the opportunity, Bill Gates hadhis buddy and company president SteveBallmer negotiate with a Seattle computerstore to purchase an operating system itowned (actually, a ripoff of CP/M) called QDOS (Quick and DirtyOperating System), developed by one of its employees, Tim Pater-son. After buying QDOS for $50,000, Gates turned around and li-censed “PC-DOS” to IBM — and the rest, of course, is history.

In August, 1981 the IBM PC was released. With the talents oftop IBM system architect Lew Eggebrecht behind it and the pro-duction and marketing flair of Don Estridge pushing manufacturingand public relations, IBM’s personal computer took off. By 1983,annual shipments had reached 400,000 units.

THE CREATION OF DESKTOP PUBLISHINGIn 1985, with Steve Jobs ousted and sales stagnant, Apple presi-

dent John Sculley, with myopic misjudgment rivalling Kildall, madea deal with Bill Gates to let Microsoft copy the Macintosh graphicaluser interface in Windows 1.0 (the plagiarized name suggested byMicrosoft marketing head Rowland Hanson). In truth, the design

Gary Kildall wouldrue the day that he

failed to impress IBMwith his business de-meanor and lost thechance to supply theoperating system for

the IBM PC.

12 ISAAC NEWTON17TH C ENGLISH COLOR SCIENTISTThe colors of the rainbow were first demonstrated byIsaac Newton, arguably the greatest English scientist ofall time. Newton’s observations on the behaviour andcharacteristics of light and his experimentation withsplitting white light through a prism to reveal the colorsof the visible spectrum, then reconstructing them intowhite light again through a second prism (in 1666), laidthe foundation for all color theory that followed.

15 DOUG ENGELBART20TH C AMERICAN COMPUTER ENGINEERDoug Engelbart pioneered many of the personalcomputing tools which we take for granted today. His1964 invention of the mouse, and his concept ofviewing data on a monitor using “windows” andcollapsible menus were just two of the contributionshe made to today’s graphical user interface.Engelbart was also a key player in the developmentof the personal computer at Xerox PARC in the1970s.

14 LEONARDO DA VINCI16TH C ITALIAN PAINTER/INVENTORLeonardo’s influence on Western art is nothing shortof profound. His technique of capturing the “sweetlight” before sunset, his use of sfumato (smoky shad-ows), and his creation of chiaroscuro have been stud-ied and copied by artists for centuries. The firstrecorded use of camera obscura for drawing was byLeonardo in 1558. His many scientific endeavours,far ahead of his time, and his position as arguablythe world’s most well-known icon of Renaissance artputs him near the top of any list of great artists.

13 ALAN TURING20TH C BRITISH MATHEMATICIANBinary computing theory using algorithmiccalculations and stored programs was a primarydevelopment that first emerged with the work of AlanTuring, a brilliant British mathematician whoproposed the Univeral Turing Machine in his 1936paper “On Computable Numbers”. In addition tolaying the groundwork for the modern digitalcomputer, Turing also summarized the principles ofartificial intelligence in “Computing Machinery andIntelligence” (1950).

16 BUTLER LAMPSON20TH C AMERICAN COMPUTER SCIENTISTThe “personal computer”, “WYSIWYG”, “Ethernet”,the “laser printer”, the “server”, and “icons” definethe modern digital desktop workflow, and all werespearheaded at Xerox PARC by Butler Lampson. In1973 Lampson created the Alto minicomputer(brought to market as the Macintosh 11 years later)and worked with Charles Simonyi, Gary Starkweather,Robert Metcalfe and Chuck Thacker to develop theBravo WYSIWYG text editor, laser printing,networking and servers.

17 PIERRE BÉZIER20TH C FRENCH MATHEMATICIANWe may indirectly thank the Renault automobilecompany of France for providing us with the formulaefor describing curves in desktop programs, for it waswhile employed as an engineer and mathematician atRenault in the early 1970s that Pierre Bézier devisedhis “Bézier curves” in order to further computer-aided automobile design. In the early 1980s, Adobemade the Bézier curve a desktop standard when itbuilt the description into the PostScript language.

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for Gates’ newOS had been sur-reptitiously underway ever sinceMicrosoft hadlured away oneof Apple’s top

programmers, Neil Konzen, to rewrite Apple system code for thePC from the ground up. Gates had initiated Windows developmentin 1984 after seeing a demo of a product called VisiOn, the veryfirst GUI for the PC, developed by Bricklin’s company VisiCalc.

Nineteen eighty-five would prove to be the year desktop pub-lishing was officially launched. Two years earlier, Jobs had beenvisited by an ex-Xerox PARC employee named John Warnock,whose small struggling software development company was indanger of financial collapse. Jobs persuaded Apple’s board to in-vest in the company and its fledgling open architecture print tech-nology. It would pay off handsomely after the release of AdobeSystems’ first product: PostScript.

That was also the year in which Canada’s Michael Cowplandfounded Corel Corporation, which in 1989 would offer PC Page-Maker users an alternative page assembly program — CorelDraw.(And it was the year that the first compact disc was released, afterinventor James Russell had spent twenty years trying to convinceindustry that his idea had commercial value.)

Also in 1985 Scitex introduced its users to a hot new WYSI-WYG page layout program called VIP. A clever programmer whohad begun writing word processing software for Apple in 1981took a look at this Scitex program and decided he could create a“VIP” for the Mac that could compete with Aldus PageMaker, theestablished leader. QuarkXPress was more than just competition; itdecimated PageMaker and became the de facto standard for pro-fessional page design and assembly (and in the process made bothTim Gill and his partner, Fred Ebrahimi, very rich).

THE INTERNET — A NEW GRAPHICS FRONTIERHowever by the mid-1990s, the Internet was adding a whole

new twist to the meaning of a “page”. In the late 1980s, Apple had dabbled with an internal project

offering online services but had lost interest, selling the business

(including the interface) back to the small company who was man-aging it, Quantum Computer Services. Quantum’s president, SteveCase, renamed the service America Online and copied the snappygraphical interface of the Mac online package onto the Windowsplatform. AOL’s subscriber base took off, and by 1993 had passedCompuserve, the online king.

That was the year that Marc Andreesen, a hack programmer ofsomewhat mundane ability, badgered Eric Bina, a genius code-builder at the University of Illinois, into writing a simple but ele-gant browser for the Internet (which they called Mosaic).

By the end of 1993, Andreesen had moved to California, wherehe was sought out by the founder and now ex-president of SiliconGraphics, Jim Clark, who was looking for his next business ven-ture. With a refined version of Mosaic (now called Navigator)ready to go, they launched Netscape Communications the follow-ing year. Navigator, a free browser with a rich graphical interface,opened up the Internet to North America — and the world.

For the graphic design community, the Internet has created anew medium that integrates the traditional page elements of type,2D images and color with a brand new suite of dynamic tools: ani-mation, sound and interactivity. It is the new frontier, a digital can-vas with almost unlimited flexibility, reach and creative scope.

Software developers from every corner of the civilized worldhave rushed to fill the needs of graphic cyberartists; New Ageevangelists from web diva Lynda Weinman to Canada’s Keith Ko-cho have spread the word about the power and versatility of newweb page design tools.

In a way, graphics on the web is the final handoff of all the dis-parate elements that constitute the fabric of graphics — art, design,photography, color, and desktop technologies — from the analogworld of printing and publishing to the digital sphere. Althoughthe influence of the Internet on graphics in the millennium justpassed has been too brief to gauge objectively, it seems a certaintythat it will reshape our approach to graphic communications in the21st century.

How ironic, then, that the individual who was most responsiblefor the creation of the World Wide Web — the man who inventedthe concepts of URLs, HTTP and HTML in 1989, and who contin-ues to play a leading role in the evolution of Internet affairs as Di-rector of the World Wide Web Consortium that coordinates Webdevelopment worldwide — had no thoughts about or even interestin utilizing cyberspace for graphics. He was an academic whosegoal was to construct a global hypertext project that would allowpeople to work together by combining their knowledge in a “web”of hypertext documents.

And how deliciously appropriate that when Tim Berners-Leesought funding for his project, his application was only granted af-ter he revised it to include the purchase of a computer, on whichhe would build the first World Wide Web server, “httpd”, and thefirst client, “WorldWideWeb”. What Berners-Lee chose for his land-mark project was the NeXT machine that Steve Jobs had hopedwould revolutionize personal computing.

In a roundabout way, Jobs was right…

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In 1985 Apple president John Sculleyagreed to renew Microsoft’s Appledeveloper license and let Bill Gatescopy the Mac’s graphical user inter-face in Windows. In return, Gates

agreed to hold the release of Mi-crosoft Excel for Windows for ayear. It was a good deal for Bill.

11 RUDOLF HELL20TH C GERMAN INVENTORRudolph Hell may be viewed as the father of moderncolor scanning. The Hell recorder (or “Hellschreib-er”), a “device for the electric transmission of writ-ten characters” which he invented in 1929, provid-ed the basic technology for today’s fax machines.The “Klischograph”, an electronically controlled en-graver which Hell invented in 1947, ultimately ledto the Chromagraph, the world’s first commerciallysuccessful high end analog color scanner, which rev-olutionized prepress production.

PHOTO COURTESY HEIDELBERG

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60 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

IF PICKING ONE HUNDRED GRAPHICS PEOPLE OF INFLUENCE

was tough, narrowing down the top ten was even tougher.Here’s who we chose and why we chose them.

Xerography established a brand new field of printing,one that continues to grow as new digital technologies areinvented to take advantage of its speed, cost efficiency andflexibility. Photocopiers and laser printers are used today invirtually every design and print environment — for every-thing from preliminary proofing to final output. And theevolution of the personal computer can be traced directlyback to the research and development performed at XeroxPARC more than twenty years ago.

For these reasons and more, Chester Carlson is numberten on our list of most influential graphics people.

Commercial art has seen many great illustrators but nonecan match the global awareness and far-reaching influenceachieved by Walt Disney and the legacy he left behind.

His genius lay not in drawing — he barely ever pickedup a pencil — but in understanding what people wanted tosee, in gathering together the best talent money could buyto create it, and in taking enormous risks both with contentand with new technologies in order to deliver it.

TopTenTHE VISIONARIES WHOINVENTED MODERN GRAPHICS

9

10WALT DISNEY20TH C AMERICAN ANIMATORThe genius of Walt Disney is recognized around theworld, and his concept of assembly line animation revo-lutionized Hollywood production. But what the graphicsindustry owes Disney above all else is the creation of anenduring standard for commercial illustration by whichall other illustration must always be measured.From his early tutoring under pioneer animator UbIwerks and his first independent production of“Alice in Cartoonland” in 1924, to the legendary1928 introduction of Mickey Mouse in “Steam-boat Willie”, the first sound cartoon, rightthrough the halcyon Disney days of“Fantasia”, “Snow Whiteand the Seven Dwarfs” and“Bambi”, Disney’s studioscontinued to raise the barboth on illustration qualityand technological innova-tion. The magic of Disneyis firmly ingrained inWestern consciousness,and as such he deserved-ly belongs in the top tenmost influential graph-ics people of all time.

CHESTER CARLSON20TH C AMERICAN INVENTORWithout xerography, invented by ChesterCarlson in 1937 (which he initially called“electrophotography”), there would be nophotocopiers and no laser printers. WithoutXerox, which Carlson co-founded, therewould never have been Xerox PARC, andno personal computers as we knowthem today. Carlson graduated fromthe California Institute of Technolo-gy in 1930 with a degree inPhysics — but he had the misfor-tune to be jobhunting in the depthsof the Great Depression. Howeverthe dead end job he finally landed inthe P. R. Mallory patent departmentturned out to be serendipitous, for itled him to search for a better way tocreate copies. Carlson’s inventionwas the first completely newprinting technology since theprinting press; the compa-ny he started has been aleader in technologicalinnovation for morethan fifty years.

ALOIS SENEFELDER 19TH C BAVARIAN INVENTORThe principles of lithography (literally “writing onstone”) were discovered and refined between 1796 and1818 by Alois Senefelder. This technological break-through provided the groundwork for modern offset print-ing. Ironically, Senefelder’s invention was motivated byhis difficulty in finding a publisher for his dramatic writ-ings, prompting him to experiment withetching and copper plates until he dis-covered that a greasy composition ofsoap, wax and lamp black on lime-stone eliminated the need to etch.He published a complete descriptionof the process, which he called“chemical printing”, in 1818 (“Voll-standiges Lehrbuch der Steindruck-ery”), after which the techniquequickly spread to England, Italy,and France. Adopted first by ar-tists, lithography was to be-come the most widepreadform of printing on theplanet, and as such putsSenefelder’s nameamong the elite in thehistory of graphic arts.

8PHOTO COURTESY XEROX

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GRAPHIC EXCHANGE 61

The Disney name glows with as much magic today as it didfifty years ago, and because of that, we selected Walt Disney asour ninth most influential graphics person.

There are many kinds of printing in the world, but the back-bone of the industry and its most common form is still what is pro-duced by offset printing presses. The principles of offset printingremain rooted in the discovery and development of lithography,the process which was first brought to the attention of the worldby Alois Senefelder two hundred years ago.

It remained for others to invent the machinery to capitalize onhis work, but we acknowledge Senefelder’s important place in his-tory by awarding him the eighth spot on our list.

Few technologies have had as great an impact in as short atime as the creation of the PostScript language. In an industryrenowned for its slow conservative approach to change, PostScriptwas like an adrenaline injection for the graphic arts. In the tenyears following its introduction in 1985, it virtually wiped out con-ventional design, typesetting and prepress and effectively democ-ratized the process of content creation for print.

John Warnock and Charles Geschke propelled Adobe Systemsto a near stranglehold position in high end publishing with prod-ucts for the prepress imaging market (PostScript and PDF), illustra-

tion and creative imaging (Photoshop and Illustrator), and typeset-ting (Type 1 fonts and Adobe Type Manager), each de facto stan-dards in their software categories. Now Adobe is closing in on webdesign (GoLive), page layout (InDesign) and production workflow(InProduction). PostScript sparked a graphics revolution, and wethink John Warnock and Chuck Geschke fit well into our group ofvisionaries at number seven.

How fundamental are the letters of the alphabet to graphiccommunications? How do we rate the influence of the man whodesigned the alphabet as we know it?

If any one person belongs in our top ten, it is Nicholaus Jen-son. Gutenberg may have invented moveable type, but Jenson’sroman font probably influenced the appearance of printing formore years than any other single development in graphic arts. Wethink he sits comfortably in sixth position in our index.

Like Dorothy awaking in the land of Oz, the graphics industrywoke up one day to find that its world had been transformed fromblack and white into color. There was only one problem: therewere no standards for what color meant, or how to measure it, orhow to describe it effectively in an objective, scientific fashion.

Fortunately, the groundwork for building a system for colorperception and measurement had already been laid by the man

6NICHOLAUS JENSON15TH C FRENCH ENGRAVER/TYPOGRAPHERBorn in 1420, trained as an engraver and appointedMaster of the Royal Mint by King Charles VII, NicholausJenson set a standard for font design which has carriedthrough to the present day when he created his classicRoman font in 1470. Indeed, it is Jenson’s upper andlower case roman letter forms whichwe still use today, and it is withoutdoubt one of the greatest typefacesof all time. An artisan in his ownright, Jenson combined his skillsas a designer, punchcutter andprinter to produce volumes which stillstand as classic examples of great de-sign and engraving. His main body ofwork was carried out in Venice be-tween 1470 and 1480, after he re-turned from Germany where helearned the art of printing (some sayunder Gutenberg himself). Not one fontdesigner of the past 500 years can failto acknowledge that their work owessomething to the proportions, harmonyand clarity which this giant of typogra-phy demonstrated in his original “DeEvangelica Praeparatione of Eusebius”.

JOHN WARNOCK & CHUCK GESCHKE20TH C AMERICAN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERSWithout an open architecture for page creation and print-ing, desktop publishing could not exist. Adobe Post-Script provided that architecture, and by so doing de-fined a new digital era in design, creative imaging andprinting. We must recognize its creators, software devel-opers John Warnock (left) and Charles Geschke (right),as a team, for they co-founded Adobe Systems togetherin 1982 and have been the company’smanagement partners ever since.Adobe products dominate thehigh end creative market: Pho-toshop is the de facto stan-dard in desktop imaging; Il-lustrator is the leading draw-ing package; and now theAdobe-driven Portable Docu-ment Format is being toutedas the next standard in cross-platform file formats. Fortheir outstanding contribu-tions to the field ofdesktop publishing,we include Warnockand Geschke in ourtop ten list.

7PHOTOS COURTESY ADOBE SYSTEMS

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who resides in the fifth slot in our compendium. Albert Munsell,inventor of the hue, chroma, value color system, made it possibleto create a common base for resolving these problems. His workwas instrumental not only in standardizing colorimetric values forthe graphic arts but also in establishing a digital equivalent whenthe desktop revolution happened.

THE FINAL FOUROur nomination for the fourth most influential graphics person

of the millennium really rests on one single assumption. Short ofhand drawn posters and flyers, is there any example of advertising,publishing or printing that doesn’t include type which has been in-put using a keyboard? Mundane as it may be, the keyboard (andits forebear, the typewriter) has been the most common interfaceconnecting humans with type production since its invention 125years ago. Moreover, the QWERTY arrangement of letters on akeyboard has withstood change throughout that entire time.

With the advent of personal computers, the QWERTY keyboardhas become more integral than ever to the workflow which gener-ates content both for print and for new media. It is difficult toimagine how Christopher Sholes, inventor of the typewriter andthe QWERTY layout, could fall below fourth in the line of influ-ences on the modern graphics industry.

As incomprehensible as it may seem today, for well over fourhundred years general commercial printing was a black and whitereproduction process. Nothing in between, strictly 100% black inkor no ink at all. Any other printing service was an expensive spe-cialty item — if you could find it.

The halftone changed that overnight. Suddenly there were

shades of grey. Suddenly there was a bridge between the cameraand the press. Suddenly expensive labour-intensive wood engrav-ings were obsolete. Suddenly publications could come alive withimagery that had subtlety and depth. And suddenly advertiserscould show their wares in print exactly as they looked — or evenbetter, if they so decided.

Halftone screening would evolve to accommodate process col-or printing. It would follow along with the digitization of prepress,bending and mutating into rational and irrational screening, andsupercell technologies, but always in the end feeding the press re-liably and with reasonable consistency.

Perhaps someone else would have come along with a similaridea anyway, but it was a photographer named Frederick Ives whopersisted with his vision of a method to convert photographic im-ages into printing plates, and who devoted ten years or more toperfecting that process. Ives’ crossline halftone technologychanged the face of graphic arts, and with it, graphic communica-tions entered the modern era.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Ives also established a permanentplace for himself in the annals of color photography with the in-vention of panchromatic emulsion, one of over seventy patents onwhich his name appeared. But the patent he would have enjoyedmost was the one he never took out, for the halftone escaped tothe public domain before he grasped its significance.

This, however, does not prevent us from naming Frederick Ivesto our top ten, at number three.

Prior to 1984, the personal computer was a machine with un-limited potential for juggling text and numbers, but it offered noth-ing to cater to the right brain.

62 GRAPHIC EXCHANGE

5CHRISTOPHER SHOLES19TH C AMERICAN INVENTOR The keyboard, the QWERTY keyboard design and creditfor the invention of the typewriter belong to ChristopherSholes, who patented his invention in 1868. In 1873 hecontracted with the Remington company to manufacturehis first machine, the “Scholes & GliddenType-Writer”. Five years later, the addi-tion of a shift key and lower case let-ters propelled the second generation“Remington Typewriter” to worldwidesuccess. The original machine incor-porated a circular arrangement of“typebars”; however, two adjacenttypebars hit in succession had atendency to clash and jam. Sholes’solution, based on a study of letter-pair frequency provided by educa-tor Amos Densmore, was to separatethe typebars of letters which tendedto fall together, thus speeding up auser’s ability to type without jams.The QWERTY arrangement waspart of Sholes’ 1878 patent, andhas survived through various incar-nations right through to the pres-ent day computer keyboard.

ALBERT MUNSELL20TH C AMERICAN COLOR SCIENTISTAlbert Munsell — creator of the Munsell Color Theorythe man who devised the concept of describing colors interms of hue, value and chroma, and the inventor of oneof the first colorimeters in 1901 — was no scientist, butan artist and professor. However hisdedication to color science and toestablishing a systematic approachto measuring color makes him thefather of modern colorimetry. Mun-sell was initially spurred into hispursuits after reading a book by Og-den Rood called "Modern Chromat-ics" when he was twenty-one. Hespent the rest of his life working to-wards achieving this goal, publishinghis first studies in “A Color Notation”in 1905 and the “Munsell Atlas of Col-or” in 1915. Throughout, he receivedtremendous support from the Bureau ofStandards in Washington. Munsell’s workwas finally officially adopted in 1931,fourteen years after his death, whenthe CIE in France established colorstandards based largely on his pio-neering efforts.

4PHOTO COURTESY MUNSELL COLOR & LIGHTING

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GRAPHIC EXCHANGE 63

Steve Jobs changed all that with the Macintosh.Not only did the graphical user interface of the Mac simplify

the computer experience, but its marriage to Adobe PostScript anda new wave of PostScript applications suddenly turned it into anew generation of inexpensive graphics workstations with a de-gree of power and ease of use never seen before.

Jobs’ vision — even his near-tyrannical desire to make some-thing “insanely great” — set off a revolution in publishing andtransformed the graphics industry to its very core. He inspiredSteve Wozniak to build the Apple computer. He grasped the im-port of the technology development at Xerox PARC. He rescuedAdobe from the brink of oblivion. He energized the computergraphics business with the formation of Pixar. He aimed higherwith the NeXT computer. And he reversed the tide at Apple justwhen it seemed like the company’s future was awash in red ink.

In the year 2000, it is not hyperbole to state that the business ofgraphics creation and production owes its present and its future tothe creative imagination of the second most influential person ingraphics history: Steve Jobs, non-interim CEO of Apple Computer.

OUR MOST INFLUENTIAL GRAPHICS PERSON And finally, our nomination for the person who most affected

modern graphics: a man revered for his humility and discipline,but whose inventive nature transcended mere manufacturing andestablished a modern model for business practice, marketing andeven social conscience.

George Eastman invented the Kodak camera, as we all know.He also invented a machine for automating the production of dryphotographic plates, banishing the wet collodion photo process to

the history books forever. And he invented flexible coated film,and the film roll holder, and the $1 Brownie camera.

But over and above all that, he invented the systems for deliv-ering his inventions. He created a modern network for internation-al sales and service, and the concept of consistent ubiquitous ad-vertising. And he put a system in place for employee benefits andprofit sharing long before such ideas had been heard of.

First and foremost, Eastman gave the world pictures. He hand-ed the man on the street a magic box that would not only let himcapture lifelike photographic images but also feed them into aunique production system which would convert “pressing a but-ton” into wonderfully realistic memories that could be held,viewed and shared.

Photography for the masses fed Ives’ halftone screening andSenefelder’s lithographic process; it complemented the words fromSholes’ typewriter in Jenson’s type. In due course it would providea real world application for Munsell’s theories; and it would pro-vide fodder for Steve Jobs’ hardware and Adobe’s software, andeven Chester Carlson’s reproduction technology.

In short, Eastman gave birth to an industry, and literallychanged the world in the doing.

So it is that, with due consideration and confidence, the editorsand contributors of GRAPHIC EXCHANGE name our choice for MostInfluential Graphics Person of the Millennium — George Eastman,founder of Eastman Kodak Company.

Now just picture that. ✷

MANY THANKS TO LIDKA SCHUCH, ROBERT RUSSEL AND MARK BRILL FOR

THEIR ASSISTANCE IN PREPARING THIS ARTICLE.

23STEVE JOBS20TH C AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPERThe power and ease of WYSIWYG color display, themouse, and the graphical user interface arrived in 1984with the introduction of the Macintosh, the personalcomputer that revolutionized the graphics industry. AppleComputer co-founder Steve Jobs not only co-developedthe Apple II, which became a best seller in thelate 1970s, but also went on to found NeXTand Pixar. Although he can’t take credit forconceiving Macintosh technology (thatgoes to the team at Xerox PARC), it wasJobs who recognized its potential anddedicated the resources at Apple tobuilding and marketing it — includingapproval of the famous 1984 Super Bowlcommercial (and despite the objections ofApple’s board of directors). And without thefinancial support which Jobs engineered in1983, Adobe might never have survived longenough to complete development of Post-Script. Jobs’ ability to “think different”changed the basic infrastructure ofthe graphics industry, and earnshim the number two position onour list of most influentialgraphics people of all time.

FREDERICK IVES19TH C AMERICAN INVENTOR/PHOTOGRAPHERThere was hardly a ripple of interest when in 1888 Fred-erick Ives announced that he had invented a new screen-ing method for printing. Yet the crossline halftone wouldprove to be the most revolutionary introduction in graph-ic arts since the invention of the press. Ives began exper-imenting with printing plates in 1875 at the CornellUniversity photo lab. By 1878 he had figuredout a method for producing “halftone” pho-toengraving. In 1879 Ives joined Cross-cup & West, a manufacturer of wood en-gravings, and continued with his devel-opment until by 1885 he had createdthe crossline screen. Although Ives’original halftone was patented in 1881,the crossline method was never regis-tered. He would regret that decisionwhen it swept through the printing indus-try, as wood engravings which cost $300were replaced by $20 halftones. Ives went onto patent “panchromatic” photographic emul-sion, the basis of all modern chemical-basedcolor photographic processes, as well as acolorimeter and the “tint photometer”. Thevalue of his contributions to both print-ing and photography are inestimable.

PHOTO COURTESY APPLE COMPUTER

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GEORGE EASTMAN19TH C AMERICAN INVENTORThe consumer photography market was inventedprimarily through the energies of one man,George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak. Between 1880 and 1900, Eastman introduced dry

photographic plate production, transparent photo-graphic film, the low cost “Kodak” box camera,

transparent roll film, the daylight-loading camera, the“Folding Pocket camera”, and the one-dollar “Brownie”

camera. He transformed what had been a complicated tech-nical exercise, accessible only to those with a darkroom and

all the peripherals, into an effortless, inexpensive pas-time, readily available to everyone. Gutenberg gave the

world moveable type, which let us print words.Over four hundred years later, it was George

Eastman who gave us the other half ofthe equation for graphic commun-

ications — easy access to pho-tographs to go with our

words. For this, wesalute him as the

most influentialgraphics person ofthe millennium.

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YOU PRESS THE BUTTON.WE DO THE REST.