During the era of bulky PCs and Macintosh desktops, each cathode ray tube (CRT) computer monitor consisted of a hefty case containing an electron gun that fired particles at a pixelated phosphorescent screen to make them glow. With the pixels illuminated, magnets controlled the gun’s back-and-forth movements to create text and images. Although similar to everyday CRT television sets, people used computer monitors in very different ways. Typing kept much of the computer screen static, for example, while simply reading or reviewing information might reduce screen movement to a complete standstill. But these key differences posed a fatal problem—leave an electron gun firing too long in a single position, and the energy would “burn-in” the phosphors to permanently scar them with faint afterimages. To save (or at least delay) screens this fate, computer designers created screensavers.
The ‘3D pipes’ pipeline
Chen’s friend then announced a design contest for the OpenGL team in which everyone built their own screensaver. After voting on the favorite option, the new screensaver would then be uploaded onto the Windows NT rollout. Before they could vote, however, Windows marketing learned of the project.
“By a stroke of luck, one of the people to see these new screensavers was a member of the marketing team who tried them out the night before an already-scheduled visit in New York City with a major computer industry magazine,” Chen writes. “He loved them and wrote back, ‘You can call off the vote. We’re adding all of them to the product!’”