Stanley Baxendale

Stanley Baxendale, born in 1909, was a mathematician and computer scientist who taught at Rutgers University, where he offered some of the earliest graduate courses in computer graphics. Working with a Tektronix 4051 computer and programs written in BASIC, he devised systems that plotted planetary orbits, generated logarithmic spirals, calculated tessellations, and mapped spherical surfaces. These outputs revealed how mathematical rules could be transformed into visual form, turning the computer into a tool for artistic exploration.

In 1979 Baxendale published The First Computer Design Coloring Book with Harmony Books, a division of Crown/Random House. The 156-page volume presented 85 original computer-generated images, printed one per page on removable sheets for coloring or display. The material drew on patterns from nature, handicrafts, and art, with imagery ranging from kaleidoscopic polygons and Japanese-inspired motifs to tilings, spherical mappings, and continuous growth curves. Advertised as suitable for “everyone from 8 to 80,” the book countered the idea of computers as cold or intimidating by showing their capacity for creativity and play. Creative Computing, a leading magazine devoted to the new field of personal computing, reviewed the work as an accessible activity and a serious demonstration of computer art. Distributed internationally, the book was among the first to make computer graphics available to a wide public. Baxendale passed away in 1998.