Technology - Oscilloscope (jan 1, 1950 – jan 1, 1960)

Description:

Ben F. Laposky was one of earliest computer art innovators, who generated images by using analogue electronic equipment in the early 1950s. His training in mathematics and an article from a 1947 edition of ‘Popular Science’ which proposed the use of television testing equipment, such as oscilloscopes, to generate simple decorative patterns, based on a formula similar to that which governs pendulum curves, sparked his interest in geometric abstraction, algebraic curves etc. and led to experiments with an oscilloscope.

Laposky used a cathode ray oscilloscope with sine wave generators and various other electrical and electronic circuits to create abstract art, referred by himself as, “electrical compositions”. By tinkering with the electronic beams displayed by the oscilloscope’s cathode-ray tube and photographing them using a high-speed camera with colour filters, the resulting images which he called ‘Oscillons’ displayed various aesthetic combinations of basic electronic waveforms playing a sort of ‘visual music’.

An oscilloscope is an electronic instrument to measure and display properties of electronic signals. E.g., the amplitude, or the frequency, or other parameters of an electric signal varying over time can be displayed on the (usually small) screen of an oscilloscope. This is usually done for test purposes.

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