The Second Coming of Steve Jobs - Alan Deutschman [37]
One of the older Utah researchers went over to Alvy and David and told them:
“Boys, if I were you, I’d get on the next plane to New York.”
They did. Alvy spent the last of his savings on the ticket.
They flew east and stayed over with David’s father in northern New Jersey. Then they borrowed a car and drove through a snowstorm—another snowstorm!—to Long Island.
They went to the moneyed enclave of the North Shore, Gatsby territory, and they entered the crazy millionaire’s think tank, the New York Institute of Technology. The name made it sound like a real university, with dormitories and dining halls, but it was actually a row of gorgeous old Gatsbyesque mansions that had been enclosed into a compound. The computer laboratory was housed in the cavernous four-car garage of one of the big houses.
Alvy entered the garage and met the man who would become his intellectual partner and close friend for two decades: Edwin Catmull.
As a teenager Ed had dreamed of becoming a movie animator. In college he had the unhappy realization that he couldn’t draw well enough. He switched to physics and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Utah. But he never relinquished his ambition of making movies; instead, he became impassioned about using technology to reinvent the process. In 1972 he created the first computer-animated film. The subject was his own left hand. He covered the hand with plaster of paris to make a mold, realizing too late that he should have shaved off the hairs. Then he covered the mold with a layer of latex and he drew hundreds of little shapes (or polygons) over small areas of the surface. He measured the distances between the shapes and fed the data into a computer, creating a 3-D digital model of his hand that he could view on the computer screen. By writing some software, he could rotate the virtual hand. He could portray the effects of lighting from different angles. He could simulate the view of a camera peering inside the hollowed-out hand. In his short film, called Futureworld, the hand looked more plastic than realistic, but it was nonetheless an astonishing work of art, simple but hypnotic, the start of a revolution.
After the eccentric millionaire went to Utah and bought up all the hardware, he hired Ed to come to Long Island and create the technology for a feature-length computer-animated film. Ed had a chance to realize his dream. And now he had Alvy as a brilliant partner.
Alvy and Ed seemed in many ways like opposite personalities. Alvy was a long-haired bearded wild-ass hippie, a subversive renegade, talkative and gregarious, and he could be fiery if provoked. He was single and unfettered and kept weird hours. He believed his natural clock called for “twenty-six-hour days.” Ed was quiet and straitlaced and shy, a clean-cut Mormon who worked from nine to five so he could spend time at home with his wife and his small children. But both men had a sincerity and a certain gentleness, and they had great respect for each other’s intelligence and commitment. They became close friends.
The eccentric multimillionaire they worked for was a figure of Gatsbyesque intrigue. His name was Alexander Schure, and he possessed great wealth, though no one seemed to know where his money came from. There was only myth and speculation. The most popular story went like this: Alex’s father (or perhaps his grandfather) made a fortune in the fur trade. Then Alex multiplied the wealth by exploiting his family’s close friendship with Major Alexander de Seversky, whom he knew familiarly as “Sasha.” When World War II ended, Alex gained access to a large amount of surplus military electronics equipment, apparently thanks to the friendly major. When the GI Bill was passed and returning servicemen began enrolling in colleges, Alex