Chapter 5 Page 6
Teapot
By Peter
Of all the objects Joshua’s mom could have shown him, why a teapot? The answer is that in the early days of computer 3D graphics, a teapot known as the Utah Teapot was always used to showcase how realistically a 3D graphics system could display an object. (According to Wikipedia, the teapot shape contains a number of elements that made it ideal for the graphics experiments of the time.) I worked on some early Virtual Reality systems at Boeing in the 1990s, and when I went to graphics conferences, images of teapots were everywhere.
In Coiled, someone has chosen the teapot image to show that this device is the ultimate graphics system. The teapot is constructed in the mind, and no 3D graphics system can compete with it.