Ivan Sutherland: Bio

Ivan Sutherland: Head Mounted Display

If Morton Heilig's Sensorama was the first step towards the creation of engaging Virtual Reality spaces, then Ivan Sutherland's work on what he called the Ultimate Display provided the link between Sensorama's primarily mechanical structure, and the technologically sophisticated, computer powered VR standard that is prevalent today. Like Heilig, Sutherland believed in the power of expressive and expansive virtual worlds, writing that, "a display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarty with concepts not realizable in the physical world.Ê It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland." As a researcher, Sutherland was primarily interested in the idea of harnessing the power of computer science and mathematics in order to fully realize his conception of these immersive virtual spaces. With his 1970 invention of the head mounted display - the culmination of the paper "The Ultimate Display, published in 1965 - Sutherland made the first step towards making computationally powered Virtual Reality technologically possible.

In addition to his pioneering role in the history of VR, Sutherland is also responsible for a number of important technological milestones. His Phd thesis from MIT, Sketchpad, was the first implementation of the Graphical User Interface, and proved to dramatically affect Computer Graphics research. After academic stints at the University of Utah and CalTech, Sutherland co-founded Evans and Sutherland, an important virtual simulation company, and now presides as the Vice President of Sun Microsystem Labratories in Moutain View, California.