Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the New York Institute of
Technology was a pioneer in computer graphics. This was thanks in no
small part to a rich benefactor who had nothing else to do with his
money but buy them expensive hardware.

One of the things they started working on was a full-length feature
film, set in a world of robots and to be made entirely with CG, called
?The Works?. They got as far as a few short rendered sequences before
realizing that, as far as being a movie studio was concerned, they
were completely out of their depth, and gave up.

Surviving clips:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UeVtT8gD6U>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdcWhvxKoRw>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_q38qWv1fo>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18OSLeWJVJQ>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAxfzwB7I8s>

Some still images are available here <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ph/nyit/>

The script was thought to be lost, but was recovered a few years ago,
and can be found here <https://lostmediawiki.com/The_Works_(partially_found_unfinished_computer-animated_film;_1978-1983)>.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.16
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-06-15 08:18:26 +0000, Lawrence D?Oliveiro said:

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the New York Institute of Technology
was a pioneer in computer graphics. This was thanks in no small part to
a rich benefactor who had nothing else to do with his money but buy
them expensive hardware.

A Commodore Amiga wasn't that expensive. :-p
(The Wikipedia page doesn't say what equipment they used.)

Some of the people involved later went on to work at the Pixar and
Dreamworks Animation companies, and at George Lucas' Industrial Light &
Magic special effects company.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Works_(film)>

One of the things they started working on was a full-length feature
film, set in a world of robots and to be made entirely with CG, called
"The Works". They got as far as a few short rendered sequences before realizing that, as far as being a movie studio was concerned, they were completely out of their depth, and gave up.

Surviving clips:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UeVtT8gD6U>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdcWhvxKoRw>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_q38qWv1fo>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18OSLeWJVJQ>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAxfzwB7I8s>

Some still images are available here <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ph/nyit/>

The script was thought to be lost, but was recovered a few years ago,
and can be found here <https://lostmediawiki.com/The_Works_(partially_found_unfinished_computer-animated_film;_1978-1983)>.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.16
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> writes:

On 2026-06-15 08:18:26 +0000, Lawrence D?Oliveiro said:

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the New York Institute of Technology
was a pioneer in computer graphics. This was thanks in no small part to
a rich benefactor who had nothing else to do with his money but buy
them expensive hardware.

A Commodore Amiga wasn't that expensive. :-p

I paid $1227.95 for an Amiga 1200 (+135.95 for Lattice C) in August 1986.

That's almost $4k in 2026 dollars.

The 1200 baud Anchor modem was $149.00 in 1986.
The assembler was $69.88.

A P6 200mhz dual processor with 2.1GB seagate HDD was $1650 in 1997,
plus $485 for the second CPU.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.16
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Tue, 16 Jun 2026 09:12:09 +1200, Your Name wrote:

On 2026-06-15 08:18:26 +0000, Lawrence D?Oliveiro said:

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the New York Institute of
Technology was a pioneer in computer graphics. This was thanks in
no small part to a rich benefactor who had nothing else to do with
his money but buy them expensive hardware.

A Commodore Amiga wasn't that expensive. :-p
(The Wikipedia page doesn't say what equipment they used.)

From the Wikipedia page <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Institute_of_Technology_Computer_Graphics_Lab>,
you have references. One of those references <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ph/nyit/masson/nyit.html> says:

Key to this pioneering effort was the seemingly unlimited
financing evidenced by Alex Schure. One such example took place
when Alvy Ray Smith spoke with Alex about how good it might be to
have not just the one, but three frame buffers. This way, Alvy
explained, the three 8bit buffers could be combined to create the
first RGB color frame buffer ever! Sometime later Alex not only
delivered the two additional frame buffers, but an additional 3,
which gave the CGL team a grand total of 6. ([?]Enough for two of
those RGB things[?] said Alex.) At $60,000 each (plus the $80,000
for the first) what this meant in today[?]s dollars was that on a
simple request, Alex had just delivered about $2million worth of
equipment.

What is a ?frame buffer?? It?s just a bunch of RAM, enough to hold a
single video still image. At 640?480 pixels, and 8 bits (1 byte) per
pixel just for greyscale, that was about 300K bytes. As said above,
the cost of that RAM was $60,000 in 1970s dollars.

You see what I mean by ?expensive hardware? ...

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.16
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-06-15, Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:

Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> writes:

On 2026-06-15 08:18:26 +0000, Lawrence D?Oliveiro said:

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the New York Institute of Technology >>> was a pioneer in computer graphics. This was thanks in no small part to >>> a rich benefactor who had nothing else to do with his money but buy
them expensive hardware.

A Commodore Amiga wasn't that expensive. :-p

I paid $1227.95 for an Amiga 1200 (+135.95 for Lattice C) in August 1986.

That's almost $4k in 2026 dollars.

I paid $2000 Canadian for an Amiga 1000 in March 1985,
plus $300 for an external floppy drive.

The 1200 baud Anchor modem was $149.00 in 1986.

In the early 1980s I remember seeing the price of modems
fall from $1 U.S. per bps to $1 Canadian. Yes, a 300-baud
modem (Bell 103 style) sold for $300 at the time. The
mainframes I worked on used synchronous comms - a Bell
201 modem (2400 bps) was about $2500. You could get
9600 bps, but it would cost you ten grand.

My first 300-baud modem, a few years later, cost me $150.
The first 2400-bps modems were, I think, about $900 (with
a sysop discount to get them into BBSes). But prices
continued to drop - my 1200- and 2400-bps modems were
about $250 each. My ZyXEL 14.4k modem cost me about
$500 IIRC. By the time 56K modems came out, the price
was down to around $200.

The assembler was $69.88.

I started with an article in Dr. Dobb's and created
my own Amiga assembler; Matt Dillon incorporated it
into his DICE project (Dillon's Integrated C Environment).

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | No artificial
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | intelligence was
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | used in the creation
/ \ if you read it the right way. | of this post.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)