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So I was watching "The Ascent of Man" from 1973 and it has some interesting computer graphics, some animated line drawings.

Bronowski sat in front of an IDI Information Displays Inc terminal that's labeled "Computer Controlled Display".










They were pretty expensive back then.




It's fun to read about the technical details of similar terminals:

https://archive.org/details/TNM_IDI...lays_Inc__20170920_0060/page/n1/mode/2up


The computer graphics were done by Peter Foldes who did the film "Hunger" that used tweening. Really trippy.



At the 7:10 mark it reminds me of the Amiga SpaceBalls State of the Art Demo.

I thought the first longer morphing CGI movie was this:

John Whitney - Arabesque (1975) early computer graphics

In Germany in 1970th/80th there was a famous family gameshow "Die Montagsmaler" (The Monday's Painters), in that a person had to quickly draw an object (that he got told as a word) that other people had to guess before the timer runs up. The special thing was that instead of a chalkboard it employed one of the very first lightpen computers named "Telestrator" that apparently got fed with a punchcard to display to the spectators the word of the object to be guessed. While nowadays tablet computers with touchscreen and pen are common, until 1980th it was very unusual to draw directly on screen, and the show was such famous that in Germany until 1990th everybody associated the use of a lightpen (on C64 etc.) with Montagsmaler (much like in Britain the appearance of a police box got associated with the TARDIS of Doctor Who). Kids at schools often played the game during break/recess on the classroom blackboard.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montagsmaler

DIE 1. Folge DIE MONTAGSMALER mit FRANK ELSTNER

There are many other clips on youtube.

I tried hard to find out how this primitive graphical "computer" worked. Apparently it used a persistent vector monitor CRT similar like an analogue storage oscilloscope filmed by a TV camera, and the ticking clock dot frame around the screen likely was just a kind of B/W luma-key effect (greenscreen predecessor) superimposing the picture of a clock made from lightbulbs and relays (and a contact wheel?) with the filmed vector screen. Telestrators were originally used in USA mainly to comment sports on TV for marking the position of players and ball etc. and were invented already in 1950th.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telestrator

Here are some patents (websearch the numbers) I found about related hardware:

Telestrator_writing pickup_US2986596.pdf
Telestrator_superimposed dynamic tv_US3617630.pdf
Telestrator_electronic pointer for tv images (lightpen)_US2487641.pdf
Telestrator_AV teaching system&response_US3718759.pdf
teaching system with tv receiver_US3671668.pdf
optical graphic data tablet_US3761877.pdf
multiple camera superimposed message_US3580993.pdf
lightpen_telewriting apparatus_US3089918.pdf
lightpen_operation on remote computer_US3543240.pdf
lightpen_electron beam sensor_US3413515.pdf
computer graphic using video phone_US3584142.pdf