The Ultimate Display

Office, ARPA, OSD We live in a physical world whose properties we have come to know well through long familiarity. We sense an involvement with this physical world which gives us the ability to predict its properties well. For example, we can predict where objects will fall, how well-known shapes look from other angles, and how much force is required to push objects against friction. We lack corresponding familiarity with the forces on charged particles, forces in non-uniform fields, the effects of nonprojective geometric transformations, and high-inertia, low friction motion. A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland. Computer displays today cover a variety of capabilities. Some have only the fundamental ability to plot dots. Displays being sold now generally have built in line-drawing capability. An ability to draw simple curves would be useful. Some available displays are able to plot very short line segments in arbitrary directions, to form characters or more complex curves. Each of these abilities has a history and a known utility. It is equally possible for a computer to construct a picture made up of colored areas. Knowlton's movie language, BEFLIX [1], is an excellent example of how computers can produce area-filling pictures. No display available commercially today has the ability to present such area-filling pictures for direct human use. It is likely that new display equipment will have area-filling capability. We have much to learn about how to make good use of this new ability. The most common direct computer input today is the typewriter keyboard. Typewriters are inexpensive, reliable, and produce easily transmitted