YouTube: Rotating SGI 3D Logo:  watch?feature=endscreen&v=jB2kGHKAj4s&NR=1

More than twenty years ago, when I was with Silicon Graphics, maker of state of the art 3D computer modeling workstations at the time, I held in my hands one of the first 3D printed objects.  It was the Silicon Graphics logo in 3D plastic.   For those who can remember that far back in Silicon Valley, the SGI  logo was an image of a 3D tubular cube represented in 2D, which gave it a fascinating “double entendre” optical illusion for those looking carefully at the image.  One day, an early stage start up visited us, to demonstrate their first generation 3D printer, and to explore possibilities for partnership with Silicon Graphics.  The object they produced with laser technology was the SGI logo, about 3″ on a side, in white plastic and set on a mahogany base.

Today, Silicon Graphics is gone.  Their brick buildings on Stierlin Road in Mountain View are now home to  Google’s HQ. Silicon Graphics CEO, Tom Jermolak, failed to see the writing on the wall: their proprietary MIPS RISC chip technology was doomed. The founder of SGI, Stanford prof Jim Clark, had by then moved on to Netscape with Marc Andreesen.  Most likely, the early 3D printing company is also history.

What is not gone is 3D printing technology, though it has taken over twenty years for it to emerge as a technology with serious real world applications.