Young Thinker

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

California Computer Products, Inc.

1968

8.5"x11"

Description

These promotional prints were handed out at sales events for Calcomp, the computer equipment company founded in 1959 that was behind the development of the first commercial drum plotters. Calcomp’s plotters, used for large-format printing of vector graphics, expanded the possibilities for the production and dissemination of computer art.

The nine prints in this group are not credited to individual artists. Some of the images, such as the Mona Lisa, are copies of well-known artworks intended to demonstrate the technical capabilities of the graphics hardware. Others are identifiable as original work by well-known artists such as Kerry Strand, who worked at Calcomp from 1966–72 and was responsible for The Hummingbird, Plexus, and The Fisherman. (Rabbit, from 1973, is the work of nuclear physicist E.J. Kaptein.)

In 1968, the original color plotter drawing for The Hummingbird,_ _programmed by Strand and plotted with a Calcomp 750/565 by his colleague Gary Craigmile, won first prize in the sixth annual computer art competition sponsored by _Computers and Automation _magazine. The artwork appeared on the magazine’s cover. Craigmile’s win was announced in a Calcomp newsletter, along with a remarkable statistic: “We don’t like to brag, but of the 29 entries published in the magazine, 20 were drawn on Calcomp equipment.”