Space Filling Curves (1972) [video]

Edit: Bruce Cornwell is in the credits as one of the Computer Animation Consultants. More info about him and some other great work here: http://vimeo.com/channels/bkcfilms/videos/rss

> Bruce and Katharine Cornwell produced dozens of highly visual animated educational films between the late 1950s and the late 1970s. They started with traditional paper and cel animation, and moved into using computer animation in its infancy in the late 1960s.

IBM 360/67 Computer

Stromberg Datagraphix 4060 Graphic Recorder

And then from http://datagraphix.us/DX-history.html

"The heart of the Charactron shaped beam tube is the character matrix. A highly advanced photoengraving process etches minute openings in the shape of alphanumeric characters (letters and numbers) and other symbols in a thin metal disc. These characters are transferred to the screen area of the CRT and then photographed on film (as part of the computer output microfilm process) or displayed on a terminal (as in our 132-column display products). This Charactron shaped beam tube forms the heart of most of Datagraphix' products."

So the COM recorders rendered each frame to a CRT and then a film frame is shot. It sounds like the CRT was a storage-type (with a persistent phosphor). Now this describes character graphics while all of the animations were vector. But the 4060 is a "graphic recorder" which sounds like it could do vector drawings. The colors probably came from a filter put over the lens. You could do different shades by either changing the beam power or the drawing speed.

I'm more stumped with how they produced the multi-color animations at 13 & 22 minutes. I'm guessing they had to stack multiple shots onto the same film with different color filters over the film camera lens.