The Annual Computer Art Contest of “Computers and Automation”

Notes

Computers and Automation, August 1965, Volume 14, No. 8, edited and published by Edmund C. Berkeley, Berkeley Enterprises, Inc., 815 Washington St., Newtonville, Mass. The file is the publisher's four-page reprint, paginated 1-4 in its own sequence, carrying the line “Reprinted with permission from ‘Computers and Automation’, August, 1965, Volume 14, No. 8, (c) 1965, published by Berkeley Enterprises, Inc.” The issue's contents page lists the contest feature at page 10.. Self-archived by the author at http://noll.uscannenberg.org/Art%20Papers/First%20Prize.pdf — Noll posts his own papers on his site at noll.uscannenberg.org, which is where this copy comes from. Hosting here is with his agreement, given to Bre Pettis directly on 6 October 2026. Relates to Computers and Automation Vol. 14 No. 8 (August 1965), already in this library, which carries the contest. This four-page offprint records Noll's win in the annual Computer Art Contest run by Computers and Automation, the computing monthly edited and published by Edmund C. Berkeley. The prize was the August 1965 front cover, reproduced on the reprint's first leaf: Computer Composition with Lines, a roughly circular field of short black vertical and horizontal bars. The reprint also carries the issue's contents page, which shows the contest sitting inside a special issue on computer personnel alongside articles by Ned Chapin, Harvey W. Protzel, John Kenneth Galbraith and Robert P. Rich. The contest page awards the cover to A. Michael Noll, described only as a Research Engineer of Newark, N. J., with no mention of Bell Labs, and prints his own note on the algorithm. The positions of the vertical and horizontal bars were chosen at random subject to falling inside a circle; length and width were random within a specified range; and a bar falling inside a parabolic region in the upper half of the circle was shortened in proportion to its distance from that region's edge. He names Piet Mondrian's Composition with Lines of 1917, then at the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller in Otterlo, as the motivation. The editors add that four other drawings received honourable mention and invite entries for next year. The honourable mentions fill the two remaining pages. Neutron Flux Distribution, by D. J. DiLeonardo of Westinghouse Electric's Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, is an isometric Calcomp plot of a neutron diffusion calculation on meshes of up to 5000 points, which its author says seems to possess artistic as well as quantitative value. A Testing Pattern from California Computer Products, Inc. of Anaheim is one used to check the Calcomp plotter. The last two are Noll's: Vertical-Horizontal No. 3, in which 101 randomly selected points are joined into a single line by alternating vertical and horizontal segments, and Gaussian Quadratic, whose endpoints have Gaussian horizontal positions and quadratically rising vertical positions that wrap back to the bottom. The item matters as the contemporary record of the contest that put a plotter drawing on an American computing magazine's cover, with scientific plots, a vendor test pattern and deliberate art on one honours list. Points of record: Noll's Computer Composition with Lines won the front cover of the August 1965 issue (Volume 14, No. 8) of Computers and Automation; Noll's own note states the bars were placed at random inside a circle, with lengths and widths random within a range and lengths shortened inside a parabolic region in the upper half; He names Piet Mondrian's Composition with Lines (1917), then at the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Otterlo, as the motivation; He is identified only as a Research Engineer of Newark, N. J.; Bell Telephone Laboratories is not mentioned; Four honourable mentions: a Westinghouse neutron-flux plot by D. J. DiLeonardo, a Calcomp test pattern from California Computer Products, and Noll's own Vertical-Horizontal No. 3 and Gaussian Quadratic; Vertical-Horizontal No. 3 is described as 101 randomly selected points, with the x-coordinate less than the y-coordinate, joined by alternating vertical and horizontal segments into one line; The editors state the contest is annual, will run again next year, and invite reader contributions. Illustrated: Computer Composition with Lines, A. Michael Noll - reproduced full-page as the August 1965 cover, marked (c) AMN 1965; Neutron Flux Distribution, D. J. DiLeonardo - isometric Calcomp plot with an orientation key diagram; Testing Pattern, California Computer Products, Inc. - a radial moire-like plotter test figure; Vertical-Horizontal No. 3, A. Michael Noll - overlapping rectangles formed by one alternating line, marked (c) AMN 1965; Gaussian Quadratic, A. Michael Noll - zigzag line rising through the frame, marked (c) AMN 1965; A decorative headpiece on the contest page made from a computer-plotted scatter of short bars. People named: A. Michael Noll - contest winner, described as a Research Engineer of Newark, N. J., Edmund C. Berkeley - editor and publisher of Computers and Automation, D. J. DiLeonardo - Westinghouse Electric Corp., Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory; honourable mention for Neutron Flux Distribution, Piet Mondrian - painter named by Noll as the source of the composition, Moses M. Berlin, Linda Ladd Lovett, Neil D. Macdonald - assistant editors (masthead), Patrick J. McGovern - associate publisher; Ann B. Baker - production manager; Ray W. Hass - art director; William J. McMillan - fulfilment manager (masthead), Ned Chapin, Harvey W. Protzel, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert P. Rich - authors of the issue's feature articles (contents page), Raymond R. Skolnick - writer of the issue's New Patents column (contents page), Masthead contributing editors and advisory committee: John Bennett, Andrew D. Booth, Dick H. Brandon, John W. Carr III, Ned Chapin, Alston S. Householder, Peter Kugel, T. E. Cheatham Jr., James J. Cryan, George E. Forsythe, Richard W. Hamming, Herbert F. Mitchell Jr., Victor Paschkis. Noted: The supplied title “Computer Art Contest First Prize” is the slug printed on the reprint's cover leaf; the article page is headed “THE ANNUAL COMPUTER ART CONTEST OF ‘COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION’”, which is recorded here as the title. The magazine's own page numbers are not printed on the reprinted pages, which carry the reprint's pagination 1-4. The contents page lists the feature at page 10, so the magazine pages are presumably 10-11, but this could not be confirmed from the document. The museum is printed as “Rijkmuseum Kroller-Muller” (sic) for Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller. The contest announcement carries no byline; it is presumably editorial, but the document does not say. The document does not say which year of the contest this was, only that it is annual. The plates are coarse halftones in this scan; fine detail in the Testing Pattern is partly lost.