RBVI History

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Some notable milestones in CGL/RBVI's long history include:

1965: MIT Project MAC system used to display first interactive molecular structures by Cyrus Levinthal and Robert Langridge
1969: Langridge establishes the Computer Graphics Laboratory (CGL) at Princeton University
1971: CGL acquires an Evans & Sutherland (E&S) LDS-1 interactive graphics display and a Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) PDP-10 mainframe computer to drive the display
1974: Langridge develops Computer Aided Analysis of Protein Structure (CAAPS) software
1976: CGL moves from Princeton to UCSF
1976: CGL acquires an E&S Picture System 2 graphics system and DEC PDP-11/70 computer for ~$500,000
1978: Molecular Interactive Display System (MIDS) software package for UNIX developed at the CGL by Tom Ferrin, Conrad Huang and Martin Pensak
1979: Serial #1 E&S Color Display added to CGL's PS/2
1981: First interactive color molecular graphics research studies reported in Science by Langridge, Ferrin, Kuntz and Connolly
1985: Annual CGL Holiday Card tradition established
1988: CGL's Molecular Interactive Display and Simulation (MIDAS) software first released
1993: Ferrin becomes PI of CGL's "P41" NIH grant
1994: Langridge retires, CGL web site created (first web site at UCSF)
1995: Development begins on UCSF Chimera
2000: CGL renamed to Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization and Informatics (RBVI)
2002: UCSF Chimera first released
2003: RBVI moves to UCSF Mission Bay Campus
2004: UCSF Chimera published in J. Computational Chemistry
2005: RBVI's Viz Vault goes live
2007: Support for CryoEM density maps added to Chimera
2013: Support for 4D light sheet microscopy data sets added to Chimera
2016: Number of journal articles citing UCSF Chimera surpasses 10,000 and downloads surpass 500,000
2017: First "alpha" release of UCSF ChimeraX
2018: Virtual Reality (VR) headset support added to ChimeraX
2020: ChimeraX 1.0 released

And here are some of the videos from our collection of historical film clips:

Interactive Molecular Graphics, Thomas Ferrin and Robert Langridge (UCSF), 1980.
Includes van der waals dot surfaces using UCSF BILD, molecular interactions and docking using UCSF MIDS, and a color wheel illustrating capabilites of our new Evans & Sutherland "shadow mask" color calligraphic monitor.
InteractiveMolGraph.mp4 (13:39 minutes -- no audio)

A New Era for Molecular Graphics: Interactive Color Graphics!, Anne Feibelman (Stanford) and Robert Bazell (NBC News), circa 1981.
Includes interviews with Linus Pauling and Robert Language, film illustrating first use of molecular graphics for structure-based drug design, and a short clip showing the molecular graphics sequence created by Langridge for Star Trek II.
MolGraphics-collage.mp4 (9:00 minutes)

A Brief History of Molecular Graphics, Anne Feibelman, circa 1985.
Includes opening animation (i.e., not interactive graphics) illustrating DNA super-helical structure by Nelson Max (LLNL), interviews with Linus Pauling and Robert Language, film from MIT's Project MAC including the first application of interactive molecular graphics, film from Evans & Sutherland LDS-1 graphics system at Princeton University, and interactive docking of a protein with DNA using UCSF MIDAS.
MolGraphics-Feibelman.mp4 (10:41 minutes)

Interview with Langridge by Russ Altman, Stanford, 2002.
Bob talks about the earliest days of realtime molecular graphics, including Project MAC in 1964, along with some of the advantages that interactive computer models have over traditional hand-held molecular models.
Langridge-Altman.mp4 (38:34 minutes)

For additional animations created with UCSF Chimera and ChimeraX, see Molecular Animations.