Basic Info
Name: William Alan Fetter
Date of Birth: March 14, 1928
Date of Death: June 23, 2002
Country of Origin: US
Description
William Fetter was born in 1928 in Independence, Missouri, and studied graphic design at the University of Illinois, earning his BFA in 1952 while creating publications and exhibitions for the university press. He began his career as art director at Family Weekly in Chicago, where he explored automated page composition, before joining Boeing in Wichita in 1959 as supervisor of advanced design graphics. In 1963, he transferred to Seattle to lead Boeing’s newly established Computer Graphics Group, focusing on ergonomic analysis and visual problem-solving for aircraft design.
At Boeing, Fetter pioneered the use of computers for ergonomic visualization and cockpit perspective studies. Collaborating with engineers Verne Hudson, Walter Bernhardt, and Richard Reinhardt, he transformed hand-drawn sketches of human forms and aircraft interiors into mathematical formulas that programmers implemented on IBM 7094 and CDC 6600 systems. The resulting images, rendered with a Gerber pen plotter, produced the first three-dimensional digital models of the human body—known variously as First Man, Boeing Man, or Human Figure. Developed between 1964 and 1967 to analyze pilot reach, visibility, and cockpit interaction, these wireframe studies established a visual vocabulary that would influence digital imaging for decades.
Fetter and Hudson coined the term “computer graphics” to describe their process of converting coded data into sequential plotter drawings, effectively naming an emerging discipline that bridged industrial design and artistic expression. Unlike contemporaneous generative art, Fetter’s approach emphasized precision and applied research, treating digital visualization as a tool for design inquiry rather than aesthetic experimentation. His writings—including “Computer Graphics in Communication” (1964) and later essays in Design Quarterly and IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications—documented his methods and advocated for the deliberate integration of computing into creative practice.
Beyond Boeing, Fetter co-founded the Northwest chapter of Experiments in Art and Technology in 1968 with LaMar Harrington, facilitating collaborations between artists and engineers in Seattle, including Doris Chase’s computer-generated film Circles I. In 1970, he briefly worked in Los Angeles, producing one of the first computer-generated television commercials for Norelco, before joining Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, where he chaired the Design Department and worked alongside Buckminster Fuller.
Fetter’s Human Figure studies achieved broad recognition before their exhibition debut. In May 1967, United Press International distributed gelatin-silver photographs showing three views of the Boeing pilot model—seated front, seated side, and reaching pose—under the title Drawings by Computer, marking the work’s first mass-media appearance. The following year, his figures were featured in Cybernetic Serendipity at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where they were also included in the Motif Editions print portfolio alongside works by Charles Csuri and the Computer Technique Group. They subsequently appeared in Tendencies 4: Computers and Visual Research in Zagreb (1969) and SIGGRAPH: A Retrospective (1986), with his early plotter drawing H32569 shown in the latter. His work continues to be exhibited internationally, most recently at the Zagreb Contemporary Art Museum in 2015, and is held in collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum Group, and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
William Fetter passed away in Seattle in 2002, leaving a legacy as a graphic designer and pioneer who fundamentally shaped computer graphics through his synthesis of visual precision, engineering rigor, and humanistic inquiry.
