Seeking info on AT&T Gemini-100 Electronic Blackboard

From: Deano Calver <deano_at_rattie.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon Jul 7 16:03:00 2003

Summagraphics were founded in 1972 and 1978 released Bit Pad (sometimes
considered to be the first commercial digitizer).

Computer graphics research had been using 'exotic' input devices for years.

A quick check of the CG literature gives a few biblography entrys the should
help:

[Dertouzos71] () Dertousoz, M.L. "Graphic Data Tablet", United States Patent
3,705,956, assigned to Computek, Incorporated, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
December 12, 1972.
    Early electromagnetic digitizer tablet patent, using Gray Code grid
pattern encoding, using phase of induced voltage

Fernald73] () Fernald, Olaf H. "Optical graphic data tablet", United States
Patent 3,761,877, September 25, 1973.
    Optical digitizing tablet: stylus shines a light on a transparent glass
plate, with a scanner underneath

[Hlady75] () Hlady, A.M. "Touch Sensitive Position Encoder using a Layered
Sheet", United States Patent 3,916,099, October 28, 1975, assigned to
Canadian Patent and Development Limited, Ottowa, Canada.
    Digitizer using surface acoustic wave

[Kuipers75] () Kuipers, Jack United States Patent 3,868,565, February 25,
1975.
    Polhemus (?) patent on generating rotating fields to digitize position
and angular position at same time (3-D tablet plus rotation, theta, phi,
rho).
    (3,868,564 is a motor patent from the USSR)

[Pobgee71] () Pobgee, P.J. and Parks, J.R. "Applications of a Low Cost
Graphical Input Tablet", IFIP 1971, North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp ??,
(TA-4-169)

[Sutherland73] () Sutherland, I.E. "Three-dimensional Data Input by Tablet",
Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol 62 No 4, April 1974, pp 453-461.

[Uncapher71] (*) Uncapher, K.W. " The RAND Video Graphic System - An
Approach to a General User-Computer Graphic Communication System ", RAND
Corporation Research Report R-753-ARPA, April 1971
    Copy on file has best image of RAND tablet and display hardware: shows
photographic image and electronic text/ink displayed on same surface

The RAND Video Graphics System is mentioned in RFC 113 dated 1971 and
describes the use of a table to drive a video graphics display.

HTH.
    Deano

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Honniball" <coredump_at_gifford.co.uk>
To: <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 8:03 PM
Subject: Re: Seeking info on AT&T Gemini-100 Electronic Blackboard


> Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> > Might anyone know where one exists? How about similar products prior to
> > December 1979? When was the first digitizing tablet invented?
>
> I have in front of me a manual for a Ferranti digitiser. It was about
> A0 in size (4 feet by 5 feet approx) with a crosshair "puck". Some
> of the documents refer to the digitiser as a "Bendix", but I don't
> know why.
>
> The dates on the schematics are 1970.
>
> --
> John Honniball
> coredump_at_gifford.co.uk
Received on Mon Jul 07 2003 - 16:03:00 BST