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Using his BEFLIX Computer Animation Language, Ken Knowlton Produces "A Computer Technique for the Production of Animated Movies"

1963 to 1966

In 1963, Kenneth C. Knowlton, working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, developed the BEFLIX (Bell Flicks) programming language for bitmap computer-produced movies, using an IBM 7094 computer and a Stromberg-Carlson 4020 microfilm recorder. This was the first computer animation language. Each frame created with BEFLIX contained eight shades of grey and a resolution of 252 x 184. Using this technique, Knowlton in 1963 created a 10 minute 16mm silent film entitled A Computer Technique for the Production of Animated Movies.  

At the Spring Joint Computer Conference of AFIPS, on April 21-23, 1964 Knowlton delivered a paper entitled, appropriately enough, "A computer technique for producing animated movies." This was published in the Proceedings on pp. 67-87. The paper reproduced some images from Knowlton's film and indicated that the film could be borrowed from Bell Labs. Most of the paper reproduced programming code in Beflix.

The following year published "Computer-Produced Movies. A computer-controlled display tube and camera can produce animated movies quickly and economically," Science 150 (November 16, 1965) 1116-1120. This was offprinted as Bell Telephone System Technical Publications Monograph 5112.

And, in 1966 Knowlton published "Computer-Generated Movies, Designs and Diagrams," Design Quarterly, No. 66/67, Design and the Computer (1966), 58-63.

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