EMAIL:johnson@pharmacy.arizona.edu
NAME:Bruce Johnson
TOPIC:Unbelievable
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE:Tube Personal Computer #1
COUNTRY:US
WEBPAGE:http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bjohnson
RENDERER USED:Strata Studio Pro 1.75
TOOLS USED:Strata Studio Pro 1.75, Superpaint 3.0, Photoshop 4.01
RENDER TIME:~2 hrs on a 350mHz G3
HARDWARE USED:Powermac 7600/132 (for modelling), then a borrowed B&W G3 350 Powermac (for rendering)
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:<insert Jack Palance voiceover>: "Ronald C. Hufferman's greatest invention was his 1955 development of the worlds first personal computer. Convinced by corporate lawyers that he alone had little chance of marketing his invention on his own, he was persuaded to sell his invention to IBM. He was promised $50,000 and that IBM would soon be able to spread the wonders of computing to every home.

"Sadly, he invested all of the money in a scheme to sell a friends 200 mpg carburetor, and died penniless.

"The computer, with the custom CPU tubes Ronald made by hand in his basement workshop, still sits in a vault in an obscure IBM research facility.

"Believe it...or not..."

All right, it's a stretch, but I had a cigar box of vaccuum tubes I picked up at a yard sale for 25 cents beckoning to me, whispering 'model us....model us...' The big tubes in the back are entirely from imagination, as there's weird multicolored glowing plasmas in them...too bad there was only about 75 pixels each to render the glowing plasma. A better view is at http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bjohnson/images/wierdtube.jpg

Besides...a computer made with only 8 tubes? That's pretty unbelievable!

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Slowly and laboriously! There is tons of detail that just didn't make it into the final render, sadly, such as all the details in the tubes, the letters on the keys, or surfaces on the tools. All the modelling was done at first with StrataVision3D, and then Strata Studio Pro when I upgraded recently. (version 1.75, a 'freebie' (you pay S&H) from Strata's website http://www.strata3d.com)

Image maps, and most of the templates for lathing and extruding were done with good 'ol Superpaint, and touched up and modified as necessary in Photoshop. some textures are from scans of my photographs, the table top, and the masonite.