[cdirkx]

Of topic, but reading the headline and the intro about Alvy Ray Smith I was half convinced this was going to be a satirical article about how he invented raytracing and that it is actually named after him; in similar vein as the “Running was invented in 1784 by Thomas Running when he tried to walk twice the same time” meme [0]

https://www.google.com/search?q=who+invented+running

[ManuelKiessling]

Yeah, it's funny how he actually ended up as a "ray smith" for a living. And even the "Alvy" part means something graphics related in some obscure language iirc. He wrote about that on his homepage, but I can't find it now - his homepage (at http://alvyray.com) is a bit... special.

[taneq]

Similarly, being good enough was invented by John B. Goodenough when he invented the lithium ion battery, which was good enough.

[dolmen]

His first name is ALvy and he invented ALpha channel.

[CalChris]

Porter+Duff's 1984 Compositing Digital Images paper paints a slightly different picture:

  Credit should be given to Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, and Ikonas Graphics Systems for the existence of an alpha channel as an integral part of a frame buffer, which has paved the way for the developments presented in this paper.

https://graphics.pixar.com/library/Compositing/paper.pdf