With computer graphics that are so good that you might not even notice them, it's easy to forget just how far we've come. That's where the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California comes in. Tom Scott popped in to describe a fascinating artifact that's quite credibly been called the most important object in the history of computer graphics: the Utah Teapot.
While it's a simple teapot here in the real world, it served a much more important job in the digital world. An object both simple enough to be easily recognized, but complex enough to have curved surfaces and do things like cast shadows on itself, the teapot was a vital tool for testing early 3D-rendering algorithms to make sure they weren't doing anything weird.
"If you were interested in computer graphics in the 1960s," the Computer History Museum notes on its description of the object, "you probably kept an eye on Utah." Alumni from the University of Utah Computer Science Department went on to play crucial roles at companies including Adobe and Pixar. The museum also has up some of the original three-dimensional coordinates that Newell drew on graph paper. The early days of computer graphics, when they had to be mixed with real life, often produced some of the most memorable results. The Utah Teapot is one such example, Jurassic Park is another. Now it's come so far that there's more digital effects than practical ones. We've come a long, long way.
Source: Tom Scott