Warning: What you’re about to see may be disturbing for some. This is a true story of exploitation of the female body in ways that you’ve never imagined. If you are at all squeamish we strongly suggest you not continue reading this post. You have been warned.
During a time when computing power was so scarce that it required a government-defense budget to finance it, a young man used a $238 million military computer, the largest such machine ever built, to render an image of a curvy woman on a glowing cathode ray tube screen. The year was 1956, and the creation was a landmark moment in computer graphics and cultural history that has gone unnoticed until now.
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Using equipment designed to guard against the apocalypse, a pin-up girl had been drawn. When loaded, the pin-up image would be visible in flashing pulses that synchronized system-wide with the incoming flow of real-time radar data. A long exposure on Tipton’s Polaroid camera would have assured the steady image of the pin-up you see here. (The pin-up lady has a spot on her thigh because that is the center of the circular display, which is where the electron gun in the CRT naturally aims when it is idle.) [via]
So it wasn’t just an idle engineer trying to animate a bimbo from his worn copy of Esquire after all, but an image with a purpose. Little did he know that 57 years later his artwork would be featured on another misogynistic high-tech episode of
The Overnight Open Thread.
Tags: cold war, computer graphics, History, Military, Overnight Open Thread, Retro, Science
