Ivan Sutherland

In this post modernism age, one of the most influential inventions in the design and art world would be the autoCAD program and the different variances with it. The man behind this invention was an American Electronics Engineer/Computer Scientist named Ivan Edward Sutherland. Sutherland was one of the first people to write a computer program, although it was 12 bits of memory, it was the first step to success. While obtaining his Ph.D. he developed his thesis, "Sketchpad: A Man-made Graphical Communications Systems.", the first graphical user interface. He imagined that people should be able to draw precise lines on the computer. Not only did he do this he also made it so you could zoom in and out. Unlike designs or art from the era before everything had to be done by hand. With the computer you could make perfect, straight lines in a blink of an eye and you could manipulate that line in ways you couldn't do with the hand. And if you messed up you wouldn't have to start over or erase you could simply undo the process. Thanks to Ivan Sutherland's "Sketchpad" technology, the CAD program and photoshop programs have enabled us to design unimaginable things to the past designers and who knows where this will take us 

Sources:

Rheingold, H.  Virtual reality. Harvill Secker, 1991

Markoff, J. Computing pioneer challenges the clock. Computing, 2001