Did You Know...
...that in 1800 ether was first used by partyers as a fun diversion? Sniffing the gas led to hilarious and raucous laughter as people watched each other become more and more intoxicated and silly. Several doctors independently realized the value ether would have to anesthetize surgery patients. Of those who claimed rights to the "discovery," none had a happy ending. One had a seizure and died defending his rights. Another spent his life in an asylum because he had been denied acclaim. A third became addicted to chloroform and, in a New York City jail, he soaked a cloth in the drug, severed an artery and bled to death.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 5313568 | Three dimensional computer graphics employing ray tracing to compute form factors in radiosity A method for rendering a three-dimensional image on a computer graphics display device involving the steps of providing a data base defining at least the geometry and reflectivity of light emitters and object in the scene and approximating surfaces of eac... | 05/17/1994 |
| 5307450 | Z-subdivision for improved texture mapping A graphical display system and a method for Z-subdivision of polygons into quadrilaterals and triangles whose vertices are arranged between two adjacent Z planes. This slicing allows both atmospheric and texture parameters to be interpolated linearly with... | 04/26/1994 |
| 5283860 | System and method for displaying trimmed surfaces using bitplane masking A system and method is provided for displaying trimmed surfaces on a computer graphics system. The present invention tessellates a three-dimensional surface into triangles and determines whether a trimming curve intersects any triangles. If an intersectio... | 02/01/1994 |
| 5283859 | Method of and system for generating images of object transforms A method of generating a two-dimensional (2-D) image of a transform of a three-dimensional (3-D) solid object involves sub-dividing a 3-D box defining viewing space into sub-boxes, generating test-cells in object space by performing an inverse transform o... | 02/01/1994 |
| 5278948 | Parametric surface evaluation method and apparatus for a computer graphics display system A method and apparatus for evaluating and rendering parametric surfaces. The apparatus includes a system memory connected to a graphics control processor, which is connected to local memory, and then connected in a pipelined arrangement to a plurality of ... | 01/11/1994 |
| 5276783 | Tessellating complex polygons in modeling coordinates A method, in a computer graphics system, manipulates the vertices contained within a group of possibly self intersecting, free space, over lapping polygons, into simple, convex polygons. A normal axis to the complex polygon is determined such that the sur... | 01/04/1994 |
| 5261029 | Method and apparatus for the dynamic tessellation of curved surfaces A method and apparatus for determining a uniform step size with respect to pre-transformation derivative bounds for tessellation of a graphic primitive wherein the step size results in triangles which meet post-transformation thresholds. To maximize the e... | 11/09/1993 |
| 5222201 | Method for displaying a portion of the body The problems of selection of objects having complex shapes and usually apprehended by a plurality of facets are solved by making use of curved surfaces, the equation of which is of the second degree. In a test calculation for checking whether a node of an... | 06/22/1993 |
| 5222202 | Method and apparatus for visualization of iso-valued surfaces A method and apparatus for generating image data representing an iso-valued surface. A series of points in three dimensional space each having positional data and an assigned scalar value is analyzed by dividing the space into tetrahedral elements, genera... | 06/22/1993 |
| 5214752 | Point placement method for use in a three-dimensional automatic mesh generation system A method for producing a set of points for a mesh of finite elements for a body to be analyzed, the body exhibiting boundaries and faces. The method comprises the steps of: producing an initial mesh of elements for the body, each element having a pluralit... | 05/25/1993 |
| 5193145 | Method and apparatus for producing a visually improved image in a computer system A method and apparatus for producing a visually improved image on a video display in a computer controlled display system. The system and method converts a quadrilateral polygon to a pair of triangles by computing the dot product of the normal unit vector... | 03/09/1993 |
| 5163126 | Method for adaptively providing near Phong grade shading for patterns in a graphics display system A method for producing realistic shading of three-dimensional objects depicted in a graphics display system. Computationally efficient Gouraud shading is practiced in the rendering of images which routinely require Phong shading to obtain suitable realism... | 11/10/1992 |
| 5129051 | Decomposition of arbitrary polygons into trapezoids A technique for decomposing any simple or complex arbitrary polygon into a trapezoid having at least one edge parallel to the scan direction for more efficient scan conversion by rasterization circuitry. An input polygon is split into "slabs", which are a... | 07/07/1992 |
| 5038291 | Computerized ply pattern generation A computerized process to generate ply patterns for manufacturing industrial parts by stacking and molding a large number of plies is based on solid modeling. The outermost shell of the part is unfolded to a planar pattern using a surface development proc... | 08/06/1991 |
| 5010501 | Three-dimensional geometry processing method and apparatus therefor In mesh-generation in which a three-dimensional analysis domain enclosing an object geometry is divided into three-dimensional elements by means of the finite element method, the object geometry or analysis domain is represented by three-dimensional run-l... | 04/23/1991 |
| 4992962 | Area set operation apparatus An area set operation apparatus effecting a set operation of a plurality of n-dimensional areas positioned in a n-dimensional finite space, wherein n (nࣙ2) is a natural number, includes functions of inputting a plurality of data defining a n-dimensional... | 02/12/1991 |
| 4970666 | Computerized video imaging system for creating a realistic depiction of a simulated object in an actual environment A system and method for producing highly realistic video images which depict the appearance of a simulated structure in an actual environment, and provides for accurate placement of the structure in the environment and matching of the perspective of the s... | 11/13/1990 |
| 4941114 | Triangular mesh generation method A triangular mesh generation apparatus has a feedback rate calculation unit and a triangular mesh generation unit. The feedback rate calculation unit obtains feedback rate ri for a given node i from the following relationship: ##EQU1## ... | 07/10/1990 |
| 4933889 | Method for fine decomposition in finite element mesh generation A method for fine decomposition in finite element mesh generation, in which a polygonal boundary of a domain is input into the system by an analyst and the domain is automatically divided into rough elements generally corresponding to Voronoi regions, tha... | 06/12/1990 |
| 4930092 | Polygon display apparatus and method Data is generated for graphically displaying objects having surfaces defined by vertex locations, each having a particular intensity. The values of electrical signals that represent the coordinates of the vertex locations and a point normal used to obtain... | 05/29/1990 |
| 4912659 | Parallel surface processing system for graphics display A Pipeline and Parallel Processing system for generating Surface Patches for both Wireframe and Solid/Shaded Models in a Raster Graphics Display. The inputs to a Transformation Processor are the parameters for the Rational Bezier Surfaces: a 2-dimensional... | 03/27/1990 |
| 4912664 | Method and apparatus for generating a mesh for finite element analysis The method of mesh generation comprises a two-step automatic process that requires no user input once a geometric representation of the object has been provided to the apparatus. In the method, the object geometry is first defined in terms of object (subd... | 03/27/1990 |
| 4899293 | Method of storage and retrieval of digital map data based upon a tessellated geoid system A method for storage and retrieval of digital map data representative of a tessellated sphere including five zones. Firstly, the number of tessellations for each zone is defined. Secondly, the range of each zone is defined. Next, the radius of the sphere ... | 02/06/1990 |
| 4893260 | Three-dimensional geometry processing method and apparatus therefor Three dimensional solid geometry in an analysis domain is divided into primitives which are three dimensional solid geometry elements such as a parallelepiped, column or globe, and each primitive is divided into scanning lines having a predetermined thick... | 01/09/1990 |
| 4890242 | Solid-modeling system using topology directed subdivision for determination of surface intersections A system for topology directed subdivision of a pair of surfaces to identify intersecting portions thereof includes the steps of obtaining a pair of surfaces from a main pool of surface representations and performing a mutual point exclusion test to deter... | 12/26/1989 |
| 4888583 | Method and apparatus for rendering an image from data arranged in a constructive solid geometry format A method and an apparatus render on a display screen (14) an image of a three-dimensional object. The object is represented by image data arranged in a constructive solid geometry format including at least one halfspace that divides an object space (28) i... | 12/19/1989 |
| 4864520 | Shape generating/creating system for computer aided design, computer aided manufacturing, computer aided engineering and computer applied technology A form creating system providing a free access to a form to be created through the whole process from its first or design step to its final or manufacturing step. In this system, the position of a third point and the direction of a third straight line are... | 09/05/1989 |
| 4855938 | Hidden line removal method with modified depth buffer Polygon vertex data is processed in three steps to create a graphics display without hidden lines and without gaps in the displayed lines. The technique permits the processing of triangles rather than polygons having four or more sides. In the first step,... | 08/08/1989 |
| 4835712 | Methods and apparatus for imaging volume data with shading Method and apparatus for shading an image volume so that surfaces and boundaries may be rendered to subvoxel accuracy. A gradient vector is generated for each voxel of an image volume by calculating the change in opacity across that voxel in relation to i... | 05/30/1989 |
| 4827413 | Modified back-to-front three dimensional reconstruction algorithm A method for displaying three dimensional imaging system data uses a modified Back To Front algorithm. With that algorithm, imaging system data are interpolated and converted into a series of vectors defined by a starting point in space and a length corre... | 05/02/1989 |
| 4766555 | System for the automatic generation of data bases for use with a computer-generated visual display A system for generating digital image data bases automatically that is principally for use in visual systems of simulators and for use when a particular geographic area is not required. A data processing circuit generates high detail realistic images stat... | 08/23/1988 |
| 4729098 | System and method employing nonlinear interpolation for the display of surface structures contained within the interior region of a solid body A method and apparatus for displaying three dimensional surface images includes the utilization of a case table for rapid retrieval of surface approximation information. Eight cubically adjacent data points associated with a given voxel element are compar... | 03/01/1988 |
| 4710876 | System and method for the display of surface structures contained within the interior region of a solid body A method and apparatus for displaying three dimensional surface images includes the utilization of a case table for rapid retrieval of surface approximation information. Eight cubically adjacent data points associated with a given voxel element are compar... | 12/01/1987 |
| 4703426 | Method and apparatus for reviewing and modifying horizons of a three-dimensional seismic volume A computer system reviews and modifies horizons tentatively defined by a network of pairs of turnings. The curvature for each of the paths of turnings of the network in both the X and Y directions is assessed. If the curvature exceeds a predetermined valu... | 10/27/1987 |
| 4694404 | High-speed image generation of complex solid objects using octree encoding To generate two-dimensional images of three-dimensional solid objects at high speed, an object is defined within a three-dimensional universe hierarchically subdivided into a plurality of discrete volumes of uniform size and similar orientation. The three... | 09/15/1987 |
| 4646251 | Computer graphics, parametric patch parallel subdivision processor A system is disclosed for subdividing parametric patches for use in a computer graphics system to develop images. The system utilizes initial data, provided as by an interactive user, to represent control points for an initial patch from which the system ... | 02/24/1987 |
| 4525858 | Method and apparatus for reconstruction of three-dimensional surfaces from interference fringes A fully automatic method for rapidly and unambiguously interpreting fringe patterns, including those having branched fringes, is provided. The information from the fringe patterns processed by the method of the invention can be used in testing, surface ch... | 06/25/1985 |
