“If you want to know about the future, ask the young people who will make it happen. The older generation may have used up its vision getting us where we are.”
— Ivan Sutherland
In 1966, computer engineers at Harvard began working on the world’s first virtual/augmented reality system.
Two years later, they came up with a design and built a machine that looked like a torture device straight out of A Clockwork Orange.
The engineers named the mechanical tracking system that hung above the user’s head the Sword of Damocles, after the Roman myth.
This is what virtual reality looked like in the late 1960s — simple wire frame graphics superimposed over the real world.
The man mostly responsible for the invention is a fellow named Ivan Sutherland.
And let me tell you, this guy’s academic and professional accolades are insane.
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Sutherland got his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1959. Then he earned his master’s degree from Caltech and his Ph.D. from MIT in computer science and electrical engineering in 1960 and 1963, respectively.
While at MIT, Sutherland invented a computer program called Sketchpad.
Sketchpad was a major breakthrough in the development of computer graphics and is considered the progenitor to all modern computer-aided design (CAD) programs. The invention earned Sutherland the moniker “father of computer graphics.”
And he was just getting started.
After MIT, Sutherland headed the U.S. Defense Department Advanced Research Project Agency’s Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) before becoming an associate professor of electrical engineering at Harvard in 1965.
While at Harvard, Sutherland and his students created the Sword of Damocles, the first head-mounted augmented reality system.
In 1968, Sutherland left Harvard, became a professor at the University of Utah, and co-founded Evans & Sutherland with his friend and colleague David C. Evans. This company helped pioneer the fields of real-time hardware, accelerated 3D computer graphics, and printer languages. It still exists today as a private firm that provides virtual training and simulation programs for military and industrial use.
In 1974, Sutherland became the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science at the California Institute of Technology, where he was the founding head of that school’s computer science department. It was there he founded a consulting firm — Sutherland, Sproull and Associates — which was eventually purchased by Sun Microsystems to form the seed of its research division, Sun Labs.
Sutherland is still alive today.
He’s 82 years old and lives in Nebraska.
The man is truly a living legend.
For someone who pioneered the field of computer graphics and invented the world’s first virtual/augmented reality system, you’d think Sutherland was the Elon Musk or Steve Jobs of his time — an ultra-wealthy tech guru living a wildly lavish lifestyle. But that wasn’t the case.
I’m sure Mr. Sutherland did make some money from his breakthroughs. But he was certainly never even close to being one of the richest men in the world.
Part of the reason for that is because he made these breakthroughs in an academic setting. But Sutherland was also decades ahead of his time.
The technology needed to make his inventions commercially viable wouldn’t come along for decades.
Today, however, thanks to what’s being called “the Great Convergence” of the internet of things, AI, 5G, mixed reality, blockchain, and more, Sutherland’s dream is coming true.
The digital and physical are coming together like never before.
Until now, we could only catch a glimpse of this world in science-fiction movies like Tron and The Matrix.
But that science fiction is quickly becoming reality.
The world around us is becoming a playground where a single look or gesture can summon up the information we need — almost like magic.
To date, these technologies have been superfluously used for things like Snapchat filters and video games like Pokémon Go.
These applications might seem stupid at first. But the dollars they command are anything but a joke. Pokémon Go has racked up an impressive $2.3 billion in total in-app purchases. And revenues from Snapchat’s “stupid” filters are projected to hit $2.4 billion by 2022.
Moreover, the “stupid” applications like Snapchat filters and video games act as a test market. It’s way better to test the technology on video games than on any real-life applications like active construction or combat.
Chris DeHaemer — our in-house emerging-trends analyst and guy who first told me about Ivan Sutherland — says, “The biggest tech giants in the world want you to get comfortable in this new digital playground. What’s coming next will blow your mind. It’s all the tech geeks can talk about right now… And it’s happening faster than you think.
“The new iPhone 12,” DeHaemer continues, “is actually just a cleverly disguised pocket-sized spatial computer. Once folks catch on, everyone will be talking about this new spatial technology. Interest will go parabolic. And fortunes will be made… for those who were smart enough to get in now, of course.”
Chris tells me he has identified two public companies that are set to deliver 1,500% gains or more across a wide range of industries. For more on those companies, click here.
It may have taken 50 years to reach this point, but now these technologies are going mainstream. In a decade, using these technologies will be as second nature to everyone as using a cellphone is today. The tech giants are already in a full-scale arms race to control the next generation of computing. Don’t get left behind.
Until next time,
Luke Burgess
As an editor at Energy and Capital, Luke’s analysis and market research reach hundreds of thousands of investors every day. Luke is also a contributing editor of Angel Publishing’s Bull and Bust Report newsletter. There, he helps investors in leveraging the future supply-demand imbalance that he believes could be key to a cyclical upswing in the hard asset markets. For more on Luke, go to his editor’s page.
