Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/77744
■ ■ ■ ■ Trends & Technologies Fairest While 2012 is SIGGRAPH's 39th further. In 1967 and 1968, Andy van Dam (Brown University) and Sam birthday, her origins go back much Matsa (head of IBM's New York Scientifi c Center), presented one-day ACM Professional Development seminars on Interactive Computer The fl edgling organization hadn't gotten around to developing a logo when it formed decades ago. In fact, SIGGRAPH didn't get a logo until 1987 (right). Just like CG itself, the insignia has evolved over the years. Graphics, and held them in multiple places in the US and in several countries in Western Europe. Van Dam taught the hard- ware and software side, and Matsa taught applications. Th e seminars were popular, attracting 40 or 50 people per session, and showed the growing interest in computer graphics. Th at led Matsa and van Dam to petition ACM to form a SICGRAPH (Special Interest Committee on Computer Graphics), the forerunner of SIGGRAPH. SICs were a sort of Special Interest Group (SIG) on training wheels. However, ACM was hesitant about the idea of creating the SIC for CG and told van Dam he would have to collect at least 30 signatures on a pe- tition to get it sanctioned. He set out to do that and had a little diffi culty collecting them since there were very few people specializing in interactive (as opposed to plotter) graphics at that time. Nevertheless, he succeeded, and he and Matsa became the co-founders of SICGRAPH in 1968. Professionals in computer graphics, both those in industry and the few in universities, wanted recognition for their work, the same 44 June/July 2012 Hint: She's almost 40 years old, and we wouldn't be here without her By Jon Peddie of Them All? Who's the way other computing disciplines were recognized. One thing needed was elected, rather than appointed, offi cers. Th e reason that the SIC moved to being a SIG was that ACM was phasing out the SICs, which were fi nancially supported by ACM proper, and moving them into being SIGs, which had their own budgets and funding. Going from SICGRAPH to SIGGRAPH was primarily keeping up with the times. Jon Meads (at Tektronix then) drafted the GRAPH conference; the fi rst elected chair was Bob Dunn. Boulder was selected because that was home to the University of Colorado, which, thanks to Schiff man's eff orts, paid for the conference. Fortunately, there were enough attendees that the university made out well. Attendance was a surprising 600 people, all showing great enthusiasm for the subject. Th at fi rst year there were no formal proceedings pub- lished (the papers presented there eventually found a home in a journal on computer graphics from Pergammon Press). Th e next two conferences (Bowling Green, Ohio, and then Philadelphia) were only moderately suc- cessful; however, the 1977 conference held at the Hyatt in San Jose, Cali- fornia, was a resounding success, and that established SIGGRAPH as an important event in the eyes of the community. One of the reasons San Jose was a success: It was the fi rst SIGGRAPH to have formal commer- cial exhibits. Many people think of it as the fi rst SIGGRAPH. fi rst set of bylaws, and in so doing, offi cially named the organization "SIGGRAPH." So Meads is credited as the founder of SIG- GRAPH. Meads and Bob Schiff man (a professor at the Uni- versity of Colorado who later became the SIGGRAPH 1974 chair) picked Boul- der, Colorado, for the fi rst annual SIG-