Information International, Inc.

Information International, Inc., commonly referred to as Triple-I or III, was an early computer technology company; Founded by Ed Fredkin in 1962 in Cambridge, Ma. Then moved (serially) to Santa Monica, Culver City, and Los Angeles California. Triple-I merged with Autologic, Inc. in 1996. The combined company was purchased by Agfa-Gevaert in 2001.

Triple-I's commercially successful technology was centered around very high precision CRTs, capable of either scanning or recording film; which for a while were the publishing industry's gold standard for digital-to-film applications. However, Triple-I is most notable for it's commercially unsuccessful ventures; a number of one-or-two of a kind systems which included CRT based computer displays used at the Stanford AI Lab, an OCR system based on PDP-10's (two were sold), and The Super Foonly F-1 - which was used for movie special effects.

Triple-I's work in computer animation done by the Motion Pictures Product Group, is probably most notable "first" from Triple-i, at least if measured by the eventual success of the technology. They created some of the first computer-generated special effects for major motion pictures, and employed a number of computer graphics pioneers.

Computer animators Gary Demos and John Whitney, Jr. began using equipment at Triple-I in the early 1970s for animation, including the first use of computer imaging in a feature film — the "android vision" effect in "Westworld". In 1974, Demos and Whitney convinced Triple-I to establish the Motion Pictures Product Group. In 1976, they scanned and animated Peter Fonda's head for "Futureworld", the first appearance of 3D computer graphics in a film. They created an early demo animation called "Adam Powers, The Juggler"; this animation was later used in Miramar's short film All Shapes and Sizes as well as referenced by Pixar's short film "Red's Dream". They were also responsible for effects in the film "Looker", and animation tests for films such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Star Wars".

Circa 1976, prior to becoming an artist-in-residence at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, pioneering computer artist David Em spent nights at Triple-I for eighteen months, learning to use their systems and create his first 3D, shaded, digital imagery.

When Disney began production of the film "Tron", they hired four companies to create the computer graphics — Triple-I, MAGI, Robert Abel and Associates, and Digital Effects. Triple-I and MAGI were responsible for the majority of the roughly thirty minutes of computer animation. Triple-I created the Master Control Program, the Solar Sailer, and Sark's Carrier. Whitney and Demos left before the end of work on "Tron", to found Digital Productions. Partly due to their departure, Triple-I was unable to complete as much of the effects as planned, and MAGI took over some of the work.

Triple-I sponsored the construction of the Super Foonly F-1, the fastest PDP-10 ever made. Jim Blinn, Frank Crow, and others developed the company's rendering software TRANEW for the Foonly. Craig Reynolds created the Actor/Scriptor Animation System (ASAS), a procedural animation language based on LISP, at the MIT Architecture Machine Group, and then at Triple-I integrated it into their Digital Scene Simulation System. Larry Malone developed 3D modeling software for the Tektronix 4014 display. Tom McMahon developed a memory-mapped thousand line RGB framebuffer for the Foonly, one of the earliest framebuffers in that class.

In 1982, the management of Triple-I decided to shut down the Motion Pictures Product Group.

Even though everybody seems to remember Triple-I for the Tron movie, the company was for the most part dedicated to electronic pre-press systems. Initially coined AIDS for "Automated Illustrated Documentation System" III produced systems to prepare technical documents, initially for the aerospace industry. They manufactured a variety of output devices that could our entire pages with graphic to Microfiche, 16 or 35mm films or truesize film. Later this technology was aggressively marketed to Magazines and Newspapers (Time, Newsweek, Wallstreet Journal and other "big names"). Since AIDS was no longer a good name and to reflect the new clientel, the systems was renamed NPS for Newpaper Publishing System. In the 1980s the company was major player in the Newspaper Pre-Press market. But Triple-I missed several technology changes which caused its downturn in the 1990s.

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