Archives West Finding Aid

David Cannon Evans was born February 24, 1924, in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is the son of David W. and Beatrice C. Evans. His father was the founder and president of David W. Evans, Inc., an advertising firm. He married Joy Frewin in 1947, and is the father of seven children.

Evans attended the University of Utah, receiving his Bachelor of Science in Physics in 1949 and his Doctorate in Physics in 1953. After completing his education, he was employed by the Bendix Corp. as Senior Physicist in the Computer Division. In 1955, he was promoted to Director of Engineering of the Computer Division. This position gave him responsibility for research, development, and product design of commercial computing systems and special purpose information processing systems for military and industrial applications. Two of the most noteworthy projects he directed while at Bendix were the innovative G-20 computing system and the G-15 computer, the first inexpensive general purpose computer to be mass produced.

In 1962, Evans joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Utah. He later was named the University's first Director of Computer Science in 1965, becoming the main force in the founding of the Computer Science Department. During his years at the University of Utah, Evans pioneered time-shared computing systems, as well as real-time continuous-tone computer graphics. Other research activities included the hidden-line problem, syntax-directed computers, constraint processor declarative languages, and memory systems. Evans left his full-time position at the University in 1966, but continued his involvement with the institution as an Adjunct Professor. In 1967, he served on the University of Utah Academic Policy Committee.

During the same years he was employed by the University of Utah, Evans was also a Professor of Electrical Engineering and the Associate Director of the Computer Center at the University of California at Berkeley. During this time, he was the principal investigator of a project sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (United States Department of Defense) aimed at improving computer-aided problem solving capabilities.

Along with Ivan Sutherland, Evans founded Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation in 1968, serving as President and/or Chief Executive Officer until his retirement.

Throughout his life, Evans was involved in numerous professional organizations. These included the American Federation of Information Processing Societies, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Science, the American Electronics Association, the Utah Engineers Council, the Association for Computing Machinery, the National Research Council's Committee on Computer-Aided Manufacturing, the Committee for Computer Science in Electrical Engineering, and various university advisory committees, among others. In addition, he was also involved in community service, participating in directorial capacities for Westminster College and Holy Cross Hospital. He was also Vice Chair of the State of Utah Steering Committee for Systems Planning and Computing, and was involved with the Boy Scouts of America throughout his life.

Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation was founded by David Evans and Ivan Sutherland in 1968. The first offices for the company were in a building on the University of Utah campus. Eventually, the company found a permanent home in the University of Utah Research Park, where it grew to a company occupying four buildings and employing 830 people, with sales of 60 million, by 1982. Before going public, the company was a privately held company backed by a group of eastern investment groups. These included Venrock, the Venture Capital Investment Co. of the Rockefeller family, the Endowment Management and Research Corp., GCA Corp., and Hambrecht & Quist investment bankers.

The company was one of the first developers of interactive graphics. The first product produced by the company was the Line Drawing System, a high-speed interactive graphics display system patterned after a prototype based on research done by Dr. Sutherland at Harvard University. The application of the Line Drawing System to flight simulation followed its introduction.

Along with advanced versions of the Line Drawing System, other computer graphics systems have been developed by the company. Novoview was a family of computer image generators which produce visual scenes for use in pilot training simulation. This product was the outcome of Evans & Sutherland's collaboration with Redifon/Rediffusion, a European company specializing in computer simulation. The Picture System product line was a three-dimensional graphics system which yielded smooth motion computations for rotation, translation, clipping, scaling and zoom display requirements. Other products, including Digistar, a system which adapted computer graphics for projection displays in planetariums, have also been developed by the company.

In addition to its collaboration with Redifon/Rediffusion, Evans & Sutherland purchased or invested in other companies to enhance their product line. These include Shape Data, VLSI Technologies, Inc., Mosaic Systems, and Unicad. Major customers included many commercial airlines, Volkswagen, General Motors, McDonnell Douglas, the United States Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Boeing, General Dynamics, General Electric, International Business Machines, and Northrup.