There’s a fascinating Wikipedia entry showing a timeline of the use of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) in film and TV.

For me, there are a few notable things about this list:

• I would not have considered Westworld as being the first film to contain CGI. As I recall, ‘Yul Brynner-vision’ doesn’t look particularly CGI-like (which is probably a good thing)

• I never knew Westworld had a sequel

• The use of vector graphics in Star Wars is certainly believable, seeing as the classic vector generated Atari game was released only a few years later

• I always thought that, like The Guide sequences in the TV version of HHGTG, all the effects in Tron were traditionally animated. It seems that this not the case as the Lightcycle sequences were CGI.

• I never knew John Lasseter made a short computer animated film while he worked at Lucasfilm (before Pixar). I always thought Luxo was the first fully CGI animated short film.

• The ‘stained glass knight’ (created by John Lasseter) in Young Sherlock Holmes scared the hell out of me.

• Now you may be tempted to think that Labyrinth is a 80s fantasy film of the cheesiest order. Well it is, but directed by Jim Henson, this film ripples with a level of inventiveness you just don’t see in today’s Hollywood films.