24 January 2022
Desmond Paul Henry - Manchester’s Computer Art Pioneer
Author: Elaine O’Hanrahan (born: Henry) Daughter of D.P. Henry and Curator of the D.P. Henry Archive.
Today's computers have many uses, including making pictures. But where did this idea of machines making art originally come from?
By the 1960's most people had heard of computers, and different types of machines, but machines that make art? Elaine O'Hanrahan (born Henry) was only four years old when she realised her father, Desmond Paul Henry (1921-2004) was doing just that, after artist L.S. Lowry came to visit him in 1961.
Henry converted analogue Bombsight Computers into a series of three electro-mechanical drawing machines to produce abstract, curvilinear artworks on paper during the 1960s. These computers were originally used in WW2 Bomber Aircraft to calculate the accurate release of bombs onto their targets.
Henry’s inspiration
Growing up in Huddersfield, Henry was attracted by the machinery of its mills, reading his father’s boiler-maker parts catalogues and marvelling at the clockwork mechanism of the clocks his father mended. This interest in mechanics led Henry, at the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, to join REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers). In 1949 he started teaching Philosophy at Manchester University but by 1952 he felt compelled to buy a Sperry Bombsight Computer from an army surplus warehouse in Shude Hill, an area he routinely frequented to buy second- hand books. Having removed the computer’s outer casing, he attached the machine to a servomotor which activated all the gears, cogs, cams, levers and differentials inside the analogue computer. For nearly nine years Henry revelled in the fascination of admiring what he called this ‘mechanical ballet’ before capturing these ‘peerless parabolas’ on paper by turning the Bombsight computer itself into his first drawing machine of 1961.
Henry’s art-making methods
Henry had been a keen artist since boyhood, and partly because of wartime art material shortages, he turned to experimental mark-making methods. In 1961 he beat a thousand contestants with a none-machine drawing to win a local art competition organised by L.S. Lowry. Lowry then visited Henry’s home in Whalley Range only to be surprised by Henry’s first drawing machine in action. In adapting the Bombsight computer, Henry drew upon his REME knowledge of predictor systems in anti-aircraft artillery. He also added components collected in his basement workshop. He did not create a precision perfect machine since he had only general, overall control. The drawings are the product of the delicate synchronisation of movement of the pen-holding arm positioned above a revolving drawing table.
Visual effects
To produce the repetitive, single-line, curvilinear effects, Henry initially used biros but as biro could fade, he turned to Indian ink in technical tube pens. Henry was struck by the weirdly organic feel of his abstract images, many of which he embellished by hand in response to their suggestive features, in the form of highlighting and tiny humanoid figures. He also sometimes added background shading or ruled lines to create an almost 3-D effect. Since Henry was not working with a digital computer, he did not write a programme to produce pre-conceived results. This, combined with the random elements of the machine’s mechanism, make each Henry drawing unique and unrepeatable. He was also able to apply his artistic intuition and interact with the machine to direct the course of each drawing.
Henry’s legacy
Thanks to L.S. Lowry, Henry’s machine-generated art was first exhibited at Salford Art Gallery in July 1962 in what Henry called “the world’s first one-man machine show”. He was hailed by the Manchester Evening News (30/8/1962) as “the Picasso of the Machine Age.”
His second drawing machine was included in the seminal Art and Technology show of 1968 “Cybernetic Serendipity”. Henry’s computer-aided drawings may be seen as early precursors to the Digital Art produced by today’s computers, and are found in leading art collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Author: Elaine O’Hanrahan (born: Henry) Daughter of D.P. Henry and Curator of the D.P. Henry Archive.
For more information, please visit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Paul_Henry
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/73/a2722673.shtml