History of Computer Graphics

Primitive graphics on Radio Shack TRS-80 computer

A brief history of computer graphics, from the earliest text character images from non-graphic mainframe computers to the latest photographic quality images from high resolution personal computers.

"Ancient" times (circa 1960s)

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When computers were still in their infancy, without screens or keyboards and using punch cards for data entry, and when printers could only print whole characters rather than individual dots, ingenious programmers found that they could "play" with printouts, using dark and light characters to produce crude graphic images.

Unlike other images on my web site, this one is made entirely of text characters. Try clicking your mouse anywhere in the "image" and dragging to select some text. You can even copy that text and paste elsewhere!

Low Resolution PCs (circa 1970s)

Radio Shack TRS-80 computer screen image

When the first affordable "personal computers" began to appear, their graphics capabilities were generally quite chunky by today's standards.

The popular Radio Shack TRS-80 computer had a graphics resolution of 128×48 dots in black and white (or black and amber if you had one of the trendy "low eye strain" monitors).

Programmers in those days usually compressed their graphic data in order to squeeze the maximum visual capabilities into the limited program memory of their computers. However, few standard graphics file formats existed – most people simply did their own thing.

Medium Resolution PCs (circa 1980s)

IBM compatible 80486 computer EGA screen image

From the dozens of contenders for the personal computer marketplace, the field gradually narrowed to two main players: IBM PCs and Apple Macintoshes. Most of the business world was adopting IBM PCs, which were mainly used for text-mode business applications (eg. Word Processing, Databases, Spreadsheets).

The IBM PC originally came with either a Monochrome Graphics Adapter (MGA) or with a Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), which allowed four-colour graphics. The subsequent Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) allowed sixteen colours as well as higher resolution (640×350 pixels). This higher resolution allowed improvements such as "Print Previews".

Graphics file formats were becoming more common, with much better compression possible.

High Resolution PCs (circa 1990s on)

IBM compatible Pentium computer SVGA screen image

Since the introduction of the VGA (Video Graphics Array) in the late 1980s and subsequent extended VGA modes, the IBM PCs could at last display photo-realistic images and movies. Users could now bring graphics into their computers via scanners, digital cameras, even video capture, and have them displayed on their screen or incorporated into their documents.

There is now an abundance of different graphic formats for various different types of images and movies. The most common of these are GIF, JPG and PNG (for images) or MPG, MP4, WMV and MOV (for movies).

The main advances since then have been in 3-D image rendering capabilities. For example, computer software can now utilize a computer's advanced graphics features to produce stunningly realistic three-dimensional scenes in such things as games or 3-D modeling.

Visitor Feedback

Apart from the TRS-80 image, the other two are way later than their respective descriptions and aren't very representative of those particular time frames.
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Your example "mid 80s" image is definately more like mid 90s. Late 80s and early 90s stuff was predominantly small footprint desktop cases and large floor towers. It wasn't until the mid 90s when some of the first Pentiums came on to scene that we started to get the mini tower cases. I'm not saying your mini-tower 486 image is itself wrong - but it really doesn't belong in the "mid 80s" section. To the next one. Here you have what is obviously a mid 00s or possibly newer but undoubtedly quite modern pc with a lcd screen! - not many of those in the 90s. I know, your going to say - but the heading says "mid 90s on" with an emphasis on the "on" and therefore the image is ok. But is that image really representative of the mid or even late 90s in which most of your text refers? I don't believe so.

– Steve M., Australia, Jun-2019