It was also one of the largest and most powerful computers in the world. The TX-2, one of the first-generation electronic digital computers in which transistors replaced vacuum tubes, was specifically designed to aid in the effort to enhance the study of real-time human-computer interaction. Clark quickly agreed and offered the school's more powerful experimental computer, the TX-2, which Clark had built in 1958. Sutherland approached his advisor, Wes Clark with the idea of writing such a program as part of his thesis. Until this time, engineers and architects had drawn their designs by hand, a painstaking and arduous process.

One day, while working with a relatively new MIT invention, the Light Pen, to plot points on the TX-0's cathode ray tube ('CRT') display, Sutherland hit upon the idea of using computers to draw. Sutherland was an intern at Lincoln Labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he worked on the TX-0, a computer optimized for researching human-computer interaction. This was especially true in 1963 when PhD candidate Ivan Sutherland utilized a number of existing technologies to launch a new era in human-computer interaction with the creation of Sketchpad, the world's first interactive computer graphics program. Sir Isaac Newton's dictum about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' applies across every field of human endeavor as curious and determined individuals tinker with existing inventions and concepts to create something new and better.

Microsoft SketchPad Logo