Computer Expert Turns Professor

Computer expert Ivan E. Sutherland has been named associate professor of Electrical Engineering, Sutherland, who was director of the Defense Department's computer research division before he came to Harvard this term, may teach a graduate seminar in the Spring.

Sutherland's work has focused of breaking down the "communication barrier" between computer users and the machines. He has pioneered in replacing complex computer codes with easily drawn pictures and charts.

With a system called "Sketchpad," which he originated while a graduate student at M.I.T., a computer operator can draw a diagram of an electric circuit or a picture of something like an airplane wing, using an electronic "light pen" on a special screen.

Testing

The computer can then test the responses of the model under different conditions. If the operator adds a stress to the airplane wing, for example, the computer will show how the wing would move, and whether it would break.

This represents a tremendous saving of effort over the older method of setting up problems in specialized computer codes. To represent the same chart that could be drawn in a few lines with "Sketchpad" might take hundreds of coded instructions, and the computer's answers might also need laborious interpretation.