Robot Draftsman[1]) is a computer program written by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 in the course of his PhD thesis, for which he received the Turing Award in 1988, and the Kyoto Prize in 2012.

It pioneered human–computer interaction (HCI),[2] and is considered the ancestor of modern computer-aided design (CAD) programs and as a major breakthrough in the development of computer graphics in general.

Using the program, Sutherland showed that computer graphics could be used for both artistic and technical purposes and for demonstrating a novel method of human–computer interaction.

Sutherland wrote in his thesis that Bolt, Beranek and Newman had a "similar program"[3] and T-Square was developed by Peter Samson and one or more fellow MIT students in 1962, both for the PDP-1.

[9] The Sketchpad program was part and parcel of Sutherland's Ph.D. thesis at MIT and peripherally related to the Computer-Aided Design project at that time.