Ben Laposky

Ben Laposky was born September 30, 1914 on a farm south of Cherokee Iowa. At age 4 his family relocated to Colorado Springs. In 1942 Laposky join the US army as a technical sergeant, he was wounded in the right foot during a Japanese bombing raid at Rendona Island, Solomon Islands, in July 1943. Were he received the Purple Heart for his wounds. After spending 10 months in army hospitals. He was discharged in May 1944 and returning to his home town in Cherokee, Iowa. He became known as a mathematically and artist.

In 1950 Laposky began to experiment with cathode ray oscilloscope with sine wave generators and various other electrical and electronic circuits to create abstract art. He became known as the first person to use an analogue computer to help to create his graphic images. He called these images Oscillation.

In 1980 Laposky gave an interview with Arts Magazine that describes how he created his work. Here is a part of that interview that with Art Magazine

	" The color photos of the Oscillons were mostly made originally on Aero Ektachrome film, both 35mm and 4x5. This was used because it had good color density and contrast - also because it was less costly as surplus for some years. Exposures vary from 1/20 at f1.2 to f2, closeup at about 15 inches from scope screen. Cameras used were a Praktica and a Nikon. For the 4x5 work I used a B&J press with a German war surplus aerial lens, an f2 tessar if 120mmf.1. Most of the 35mm images were in motion in some or all of the traces (besides the electron beam motion itself). The 4x5 traces were taken at about 1/2 second, also at f2, and usually were static, the trace motion stopped by sync circuits in the oscilloscope. The black and white photos were made mostly on Linagraph film, a special high contrast film by Kodak for oscillograph photography. Some 4x5 work was done on Royal Pan and other fast films."
—Arts Magazine, "Ben F. Laposky: A Midwestern Pioneer of Absolute Light Form" June 1980

Laposky's art was published more than 160 times and displayed at more than 200 exhibitions before the emergence of computer graphics upstaged him in the mid 1960s.

Loposky died in 2000, after his death none of the 10,000 negatives he claimed to have taken have ever been found, and out of his original set of 102 mounted image only 101 remain.