Imagine a world where computers were not personal devices but massive machines occupying entire rooms, fed by punch cards. In this analog era, the idea of designing a 3D object on a screen was purely science fiction. Before 3D printing could even be conceived as a manufacturing method, humanity first had to solve a more fundamental problem: How do we speak to computers in shapes instead of just numbers?
The 1960s laid the absolute foundation for everything we do today. Every time you rotate a model in Cura or sketch a line in Fusion 360, you are using technology that was born in this decade.
1963 - Ivan Sutherland & Sketchpad
The true revolution began at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory in 1963. A visionary student named Ivan Sutherland developed a program called Sketchpad for his PhD thesis. It is widely considered the ancestor of modern Computer-Aided Design (CAD).
Sketchpad was groundbreaking because it introduced the "Light Pen". Instead of typing coordinates, users could draw directly on the CRT monitor of a massive TX-2 computer. But it wasn't just a drawing tool; it was intelligent.
The Birth of "Constraints"
What made Sketchpad truly special—and why it matters for 3D printing today—was the introduction of parametric constraints. If you drew four lines and told the computer "this is a square," Sketchpad understood the relationship. If you moved one corner, the other three would adjust automatically to keep it a square.
This logic is exactly how modern parametric software like SolidWorks or Autodesk Inventor works today. Sutherland didn't just invent digital drawing; he invented digital logic for geometry.
The Hardware Beast: MIT's TX-2
To run Sketchpad, Sutherland used the TX-2, one of the most powerful computers of its time. It had about 320KB of memory (tiny by today's standards, but massive then) and filled a large room. It was a "personal" computer only in the sense that Sutherland often had to use the entire machine by himself to get enough processing power to render lines in real-time.
The French Revolution: Curves & Cars
While Americans were working on interaction, the French automotive industry was solving the math of 3D surfaces. In the late 60s, designing a car body was a manual process involving clay and wood. It was imprecise and hard to replicate.
Two engineers, working for rival car companies, changed this forever:
- Pierre Bézier (Renault): He developed a mathematical system to describe smooth curves using control points. Today, we call them Bézier Curves. They are the standard for vector graphics and 3D pathing.
- Paul de Casteljau (Citroën): Interestingly, he discovered similar algorithms slightly earlier than Bézier, but Citroën kept his work a secret industrial property.
Without these mathematical descriptions of curves and surfaces, the
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files and G-code paths used in 3D printing would be impossible to
generate with precision.
Why This Era Matters?
The 1960s didn't give us a 3D printer, but they gave us the digital blueprint. They transformed the computer from a glorified calculator into a canvas. By the end of the decade, the stage was set. We had the math (Bézier), and we had the interface (Sketchpad). The world was now ready for the algorithms of the 70s and the hardware of the 80s.