Dr. Smith's résumé reads like a list of great moments in computer graphics. He joined Xerox
PARC in 1974 and produced work that found its way into the New York Museum of Modern
Art. He arrived in the nascent stage of the Computer Graphics Laboratory at the New York
Institute of Technology, where he collaborated with moviemaker Ed Emshwiller and co-invented
the Alpha Channel, a concept that became so ubiquitous it appears even in mass-marketed
programs such as Photoshop. From 1980 through 1986, he was director of computer graphics
research at Lucasfilm; while there he directed the beautiful "genesis" sequence for Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan, depicting the spread of life across a new world. He co-founded Pixar
(where the classic Tin Toy animated short was made), then Altamira, which was then acquired by
Microsoft.
Excerpted from Wired magazine, July 1996