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Evans & Sutherland
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Evans & Sutherland is a computer firm involved in the computer graphics field. Their products are used primarily by the military and large industrial firms for training and simulation, and in digital projection environments like planetariums.
History
The company was founded in 1968 by David Evans and Ivan Sutherland, professors in the Computer Science Department at the University of Utah.
The two professors were pioneers in computer graphics technology.
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Encyclopedia
Evans & Sutherland is a computer firm involved in the computer graphics field. Their products are used primarily by the military and large industrial firms for training and simulation, and in digital projection environments like planetariums.
History
The company was founded in 1968 by David Evans and Ivan Sutherland, professors in the Computer Science Department at the University of Utah.
The two professors were pioneers in computer graphics technology. They formed the company to produce hardware to run the systems being developed in the University, working from an abandoned barracks on the university grounds. Most of the employees were active or former students, and included Jim Clark, who started Silicon Graphics, Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, and John Warnock of Adobe.
In the 1970s they formed a partnership with Rediffusion Simulation, a UK-based flight simulator company, to design and build digital flight simulators. This remains E&S's primary market to this day, delivering display systems with enough brightness to light up a simulator cockpit to daytime light levels.
In 1978 the company went public with a listing on NASDAQ.
In the 1980s they added a Digital Theater division, supplying all-digital projectors to create immersive mass-audience experiences at planetariums, visitor attractions and similar education and entertainment venues. Digital Theater has grown to become a major arm of E&S commercial activity and, since its launch in July 2003, the company's Digistar 3 system has become the world's fastest selling Digital Theater system installed in upwards of 60 fulldome venues worldwide.
For a brief period between 1986 and 1989 E&S was also a supercomputer vendor, but their ES-1 was released just as the supercomputer market was drying up in the post-cold war military wind-down. Only a handful of machines were built, most broken up for scrap.
During the 1990s E&S tried to expand into several other commercial markets. The Freedom Series graphics engine was developed to work with Sun Microsystems, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and DEC workstations. 3D Pro technology was developed for the first wave of 3D graphics cards for PCs. Also, the MindSet virtual set system was created to address the needs of the broadcast video market.
In 1993 Evans and Sutherland helped Japanese arcade giant Namco with texture-mapping technology in Namco's System 22 arcade board that powered Ridge Racer. The help that E&S gave Namco was similar to the help that Martin Marietta gave Sega with the MODEL 2 board that powered Daytona USA and Desert Tank arcade games.
James Oyler joined the company as CEO in 1994 when David Evans retired. He resigned June 8, 2006, shortly after the sale of the simulation business division to Rockwell Collins. The company continues to expand its Digital Theater division.
As of 2006 Evans & Sutherland joined companies with Spitz, a major company in the production of dome theaters.
Use in Movies and Special Effects
An Evans and Sutherland computer was used in the creation of the Project Genesis simulation sequence in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, which was one of the first computer graphic sequences ever used in a movie.
Products
Terminals
Workstations
Accelerators
Simulation Image Generators
Planetarium Products
Supercomputers
External links
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