TITLE: Tube Personal Computer #1
NAME: Bruce Johnson
COUNTRY: US
EMAIL: johnson@pharmacy.arizona.edu
WEBPAGE: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bjohnson
TOPIC: Unbelievable
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: tubecom1.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Strata Studio Pro 1.75

TOOLS USED: 
    Strata Studio Pro 1.75, Superpaint 3.0, Photoshop 4.01

RENDER TIME: 
    ~2 hrs on a 350mHz G3

HARDWARE USED: 
    Powermac 7600/132 (for modelling), then a borrowed B&W G3 350
Powermac (for rendering)

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    insert Jack Palance voiceover "Ronald C. Hufferman's
greatest invention was his 1955 development of the worlds first personal
computer. Convinced by corporate lawyers that he alone had little chance of
marketing his invention on his own, he was persuaded to sell his invention to
IBM. He was promised $50,000 and that IBM would soon be able to spread the
wonders of computing to every home.

"Sadly, he invested all of the money in a scheme to sell a friends 200 mpg
carburetor, and died penniless.

"The computer, with the custom CPU tubes Ronald made by hand in his basement
workshop, still sits in a vault in an obscure IBM research facility.

"Believe it...or not..."

All right, it's a stretch, but I had a cigar box of vaccuum tubes I picked up at
a yard sale for 25 cents beckoning to me, whispering 'model us....model us...'
The big tubes in the back are entirely from imagination, as there's weird
multicolored glowing plasmas in them...too bad there was only about 75 pixels
each to render the glowing plasma. A better view is at
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bjohnson/images/wierdtube.jpg

Besides...a computer made with only 8 tubes? That's pretty unbelievable!


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 
    Slowly and laboriously! There is tons
of detail that just didn't make it into the final render, sadly, such as all
the details in the tubes, the letters on the keys, or surfaces on the tools.
All the modelling was done at first with StrataVision3D, and then Strata Studio
Pro when I upgraded recently. (version 1.75, a 'freebie' (you pay S&H) from
Strata's website http://www.strata3d.com)

Image maps, and most of the templates for lathing and extruding were done with
good 'ol Superpaint, and touched up and modified as necessary in Photoshop.
some textures are from scans of my photographs, the table top, and the
masonite.





