Top 10 graphics technologies

At its heart, computing is all about numbers. The earliest systems were designed to crunch numbers and crack codes, and the basic level of all IT is still moving numbers from place to place.

But numbers are difficult for a species that has only discovered them in the past few thousand years. We're still a very eye-orientated race, and computers only really took off in the mainstream after we learned to deal with them visually. What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) is a very powerful concept.

So in the past three decades, graphics have taken a prominent place in the industry and helped to push IT into the multi-trillion dollar business it is today. Entire industries have sprung up around putting images on screens that are limited only by the human mind.

This week, in light of recent news from Adobe, AMD and Intel, we take a look at some of the graphics technologies that helped take computing out of the lab and into the hands of creative professionals and multimedia-hungry consumers.

Honourable mention: Inkjet printing
Iain Thomson: You might ask why, in a list of technology behind the visualisation of computing, inkjet printing is only an Honourable Mention.

After all, it has dramatically lowered the cost of printing to the point where anyone with $50 can produce images that would have required a commercial company 40 years ago. It's enabled businesses to create their own publicity material, and put a printer in every home that wants one.

But it's further down the list because the industry is stagnating and may soon be on the way out. While the industry will continue to supply domestic needs, it isn't a large-scale business technology but will last until we get flexible electronic screens, or at least that's my hope.

That's because inkjet printing is incredibly polluting and wasteful, considering all the plastics, inks and paper involved. Manufacturers sell units below production costs and make their money back on the ink, pricing it at around $5,000 to $8,000 a gallon, and it's often cheaper to buy a new printer than the ink cartridge to fill it.

Add in some manufacturers' insistence on microchipping their cartridges with sensors that show empty, and kill the third-party refill market despite it being a basic recycling facility, and you've got a system that needs to be replaced as soon as possible.

Shaun Nichols: A recurring joke among techies suggests that if cars were like computers we would all have $25 cars that got 1,000 miles per gallon. If cars were like inkjet printers, however, we would all be driving $50 trucks and gas would cost $100 per gallon.

Yes, inkjet printing really has helped to expand the appeal of the home PC and has made the consumer digital camera market possible, but I can't help cursing the people who developed the inkjet every time I have to shell out for a new cartridge. I would suggest that few things have driven the effort to save paper as the price of printer cartridges.

There are some interesting alternatives under development. The use of solid-ink substances is still being looked at, and some vendors are even developing cheaper printer inks that use waxy bars that resemble large crayons. They can't come soon enough, as far as I'm concerned.

Honourable mention: KidPix
Shaun Nichols: As a child who spent many hours doodling in Kid Pix, this one is a bit of a sentimental selection on my part, but I really do believe that it deserves recognition for the role it played in spreading digital art.

In the 1990s the personal computing revolution really began to take hold in earnest. While computers were becoming cheaper and easier to use, there still weren't many programs out there for kids beyond video games. One of the few applications that was usable by children and still somewhat constructive was Kid Pix, a drawing/animation tool designed for the four to 12 age group.

While it wasn't the most sophisticated tool out there, Kid Pix achieved its goal of allowing children to create digital art, and it inspired more than a few kids who would not have otherwise been interested in the field to later become digital artists.

Iain Thomson: Shaun's experience is not shared. Back in my day it was a green screen if you were lucky, but Shaun's eloquence in describing the system won me over.

After looking at it I can see why it appeals. It's MacPaint for kids, if you like, a hi-tech version of a crayon and colouring book, but with so much more potential. I suspect it's inspired a whole generation of graphic artists in its time.

The next generation of users got the ability to watch and manipulate video and one wonders whether the birth of the flurry of user content termed Web 2.0 has some of its seeds in this application.