Sketchpad ran on the Lincoln TX-2 computer and influenced Douglas Engelbart's On-Line System as well as a development of the graphical user interface. Sketchpad, in turn, was influenced per conceptual Memex as envisioned by Vannevar Bush in his famous paper "As We May Think". For his invention of Sketchpad & related operate, Sutherland received a Turing Award in 1988.

Around 1968, Sutherland, sustaining a assist of his student Bob Sproull, created what may keep close at hand been the world's foremost virtual reality system using head-mounted displays (HMDs)[http://www.sun.com/960710/feature3/alice.html]. It was primitive each inside terms of interface & realism; a HMD to exist as worn per user was then large it got to exist as suspended from either a ceiling, & a graphics comprising a virtual reality were elementary wireframe rooms.

Sutherland earned his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (known now as Carnegie-Mellon University), his Master's degree from Caltech, and his Ph.D. from either MIT. By having his friend & colleague David Evans, he established Evans and Sutherland, a company that has done pioneering work in the field of real-time hardware, accelerated 3D computer graphics and printer languages.

Previous employees of Evans & Sutherland involved a new founders of Adobe (John Warnock) and Silicon Graphics (Jim Clark).

He presently works for Sun Microsystems.