Computer Imagery (coloring book)

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Martin Kahn

1981

Book

The Library

Description

Published in 1981, Martin Kahn’s Computer Imagery: A Coloring Book is an early demonstration of the artist and programmer’s efforts to harness computers in aid of human creativity. The book features a series of computer-generated designs based on mathematical formulas, printed in black and white for hand-coloring.

Kahn is best-known as the programmer behind The Print Shop, a popular desktop publishing software package released in 1984. But when he made the coloring book, he was working at North Star Computers in Berkeley, California, developing graphics utilities. He wrote the programs for the images in North Star Basic to run on a North Star Horizon computer; the printer was an NEC Spinwriter.

“All people create complex and beautiful images in their mind, but few are able to express them,” Kahn wrote in an introduction to the book. “Thanks to the increasing availability of small computers, more and more people are finding new modes of self-expression.”