I was only a few pages into Alvy Ray Smith’s new book, A Biography of the Pixel, when I realized that all of my preconceptions about what it might be were wrong.
A legend of computer graphics, Smith is one of the people who bootstrapped the entire field in the 1970s. Then, as cofounder of Pixar, he helped get it started on the trajectory that would take it to its greatest heights. But to describe what he’s written just as a history of computer graphics would be woefully inadequate. For instance, French mathematician Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) is as big a player in this book as anyone who actually lived to see the computer age. And relatively little space is devoted to moments Smith witnessed firsthand.
It turned out that even my understanding of the term pixel had little to do with Smith’s definition. A Biography of the Pixel isn’t about blocky little elements on a computer screen. Instead, one of its key points is that pixels are invisible. Rather than having a one-to-one…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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