() is a
Computer firm involved in the
Computer Graphics field. Their products are used primarily by the
Military and large industrial firms for training and
Simulation , and in digital projection environments like
Planetarium s.
In the late 1960s,
David Evans started the new Computer Science Department at the
University Of Utah and was looking for a niche the university could compete in. At the time the hot fields were
Artificial Intelligence or
Computer Graphics , and realizing that the former was essentially locked up by the larger universities like
MIT , he decided on the latter.
Ivan Sutherland was perhaps one of the most famous people working in the graphics field. He had previously worked on the seminal
Sketchpad at MIT in
1963 , and had since invented the first
3D display that we would now call
Virtual Reality . The two met earlier while working on
DARPA projects, so Evans recruited him to join the university in
1968 . The result was that, during the
1960s and
1970s , the University of Utah was ''the'' place to be if you were interested in graphics.
Looking to produce hardware to run the systems being developed in the University, the two set up E&S, working from an abandoned
Barracks on the university grounds. Most of the employees were active or former students, as might be expected, and the list read like a who's-who of the industry. Examples include
Jim Clark , who started
Silicon Graphics ,
Ed Catmull , co-founder of
Pixar , and
John Warnock of
Adobe .
In the early 1970s they formed a partnership with
Rediffusion , a
UK -based
Flight Simulator company, to design and build digital flight simulators. This remains E&S's primary market to this day, delivering display systems with enough brightness to light up a simulator
Cockpit to daytime light levels. In the
1980s they added a Digital Theater division, supplying all-digital projectors to create immersive mass-audience experiences at planetariums, visitor attractions and similar education and entertainment venues. Digital Theater has grown to become a major arm of E&S commercial activity and, since its launch in July 2003, the company's Digistar 3 system has become the world's fastest selling Digital Theater system installed in upwards of 60
Fulldome venues worldwide.
For a brief period between
1986 and
1989 E&S was also a
Supercomputer vendor, but their
ES-1 was released just as the supercomputer market was drying up in the post-
Cold War military wind-down. Only a handful of machines were built, most broken up for scrap.
During the
1990s E&S tried to expand into several other commercial markets. The Freedom Series graphics engine was developed to work with
Sun Microsystems ,
IBM ,
Hewlett Packard , and
DEC workstations. 3D Pro technology was developed for the first wave of 3D graphics cards for PCs. Also, the MindSet virtual set system was created to address the needs of the broadcast video market.
James Oyler joined the company as CEO in
1994 when David Evans retired. He resigned June 8, 2006, shortly after the sale of the simulation business division to
Rockwell Collins . The company continues to expand its Digital Theater division.
As of 2006 Evans & Sutherland joined companies with Spitz, a major company in the production of dome theaters.
An Evans and Sutherland computer was used in the creation of the , which was one of the first computer graphic sequences ever used in a movie.
