"Thе Commodore РЕТ offers you а safe passage through the primeval swamр of computerization," says the ad copy accompanying this uncredited illustration in a June 1981 issue of Personal Computer World: That image and ad copy offers a perfect example of how most retro tech illustration works: Visualize the hell
An Archive of Commercial Illustration (c. 1950-75)
Illustrator Zara Picken maintains an archive of commercial illustration from the mid-20th century. So much throwback inspiration here!
Classic Programmer Paintings
Twitter: @progpaintings Painters and Hackers: nothing in common whatsoever, but this is software...
Illustration of Harvard Mark III | Mastering the Game | Computer History Museum
paint: a timeline — Kristen Roos
This timeline is the result of researching the origins of digital paint and draw software, and the tools that were developed to allow for hand manipulation (versus plotter drawn) drawing and painting - the mouse, light pen & drawing tablet. If we look at the software that has become commonplace today (such as adobe photoshop), which allows for painting, animation and photo manipulation in one, we can trace the roots of this software to the University and Corporate Labs that housed large computers with advanced capabilities for their time - MIT Lincoln Labs & Radiation Labs, DARPA & the Augmented Research Centre (ARC), Bell Labs, NYIT’s Computer Graphics Lab, Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (Xerox PARC), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL). The artistic collaborations that grew out of these labs fueled the advent of Computer Graphics, Computer Art and Video Art from the 1960's to the 1990's.
Permacomputing 101
aesthetics
Aesthetics is relevant to many aspects of computing. Here, we are mostly concerned of the superficial visual appearances and their technological bases.
William Latham - Art and the Computer (1990)
triumph of the nerds
Computer Graphics from Scratch - Gabriel Gambetta
Behind the beautiful imagery of the latest animated movie and the realistic environments of popular videogames lie some mysterious algorithms. Computer Graphics from Scratch aims to demystify these algorithms and shows you that computer graphics can be surprisingly simple.
IBM's "Man & Computer" (1967)
Intertwingler
The central premise of Intertwingler is that the computer is underutilized as an expressive medium. That may seem wild at first to say, but if you look around, you can find copious examples of the computer as a tool for preparing media, or as a vehicle for transporting or rendering media, but the actual content of the media in question would work just as well as if it had been made a hundred years ago:
Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad
41 Years of Microsoft Windows Design History - 88 Images - Version Museum
A comprehensive visual history of Microsoft Windows from 1985 to 2026. See a gallery of the Microsoft Windows evolution from the beginning to present day.
Executive of the Future
Image depicts an anthropomorphic computer with a face and multiple arms; the machine is typing and pushing buttons on a control panel. The image was published in Artzy …
