Charles Csuri Carves a Computer-Defined Surface in Wood

One of the earliest instances of a digitally modeled sculpture and something approaching 3D printing resulted from Charles Csuri testing a computer's outputs beyond the plotter and film.

For Numeric Milling (1968) one of his collaborators at Ohio State wrote a tool for defining a mathematical surface, the form later known as the Ferguson patch. Csuri had that surface carved in wood on a milling machine in the university’s engineering department. Robert Mallary's Quad III, shown at Cybernetic Serendipity, is another example from this time of computer-generated sculpture.