HISTORY OF GRAPHICS
History of Graphics and the Tools Used
Some of the earliest graphics and drawings known to the modern world, from almost 6,000 years ago, are that of engraved stone tablets and ceramic cylinder seals, marking the beginning of the historic periods, and the keeping of records for accounting and inventory purposes. Records from Egypt predate these and papyrus was used by the Egyptians as a material on which to plan the building of pyramids; they also used slabs of limestone and wood. From 600–250 BC, the Greeks played a major role in geometry. They used graphics to represent their mathematical theories such as the Circle Theorem and the Pythagorean Theorem.
In the recent time, computers have been made more powerful and are now capable of drawing both basic and complex shapes and designs. In the 1980s, artists and graphic designers began to see the personal computer, as a serious design tool, one that could save time and draw more accurately than other methods. 3D computer graphics became possible in the late 1980s with the powerful SGI computers, which were later used to create some of the first fully computer-generated short films. The Macintosh remains one of the most popular tools for computer graphics in graphic design studios and businesses.
2. BASIC TYPES OF GRAPHICS
There are two main types of graphics namely:
1. Vector graphics, and
2. Bitmaps.
Vector Graphics
Vector graphics (Mukhopadhyay & Chattopadhyay, 2007) are those which can be created straightaway on a computer without engaging a third party system or facilitation. For instance, you can type texts, draw lines, curves, shapes and fill them with some color without the use of any third party gadget or appliance. These are generally referred to as graphic primitives and they, especially the shapes, are generated from a set of programmed algorithms that determine their positions, length as well as their directions.
Bitmaps:
Bitmaps or rasterised images (as technical persons and engineers prefer to call them) cannot be imputed into your system without the use of an application independent of your computer. Unlike vector graphics which are generated from a set of algorithms that determine their position, direction, weight and length, bitmaps consist of tiny squareshaped picture elements, which are called pixels – a reason why bitmaps are also called pixilated graphics. Each pixel is the small dot that a computer can recognise. Each pixel maps a location in an image and has numerical color forms, each with a value. The photograph you take with your camera is a classic example of a bitmap graphic