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One of one

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park Indigo

Silicon Graphics presented this Indigo Elan to Steven Spielberg during the production of Jurassic Park.

MakerSilicon Graphics
Era1990s
Type3D graphics workstation
The story of this machine ↓
A COLLECTOR’S PERSPECTIVE
Amir Husain

About this object

This Indigo Elan carries the inscription "The Spielberg Edition, 1/1." Its handover photograph, service labels, and collection history connect the machine to Steven Spielberg and the production of Jurassic Park.

Inspect the original photograph
Original collection photograph: Silicon Graphics Indigo Elan
The original collection photograph. Exhibit views use display masks to hide surrounding backgrounds; the photographed hardware is unchanged. Select the image to view it at full resolution.
From the collection

The machine, photographed here

Photographs of the Indigo as it is held in the collection.

The gold script: the Spielberg Edition, 1/1.
The gold script: the Spielberg Edition, 1/1.
The front door open, with the original service labels inside.
The front door open, with the original service labels inside.
Steven Spielberg and Harry Pforzheimer beside the Indigo and its shipping crate, under a Silicon Graphics banner
Photograph courtesy of Harry Pforzheimer, Silicon Graphics.

Steven Spielberg receiving the machine from Harry Pforzheimer, the two of them standing beside it on its shipping crate under a Silicon Graphics banner. The crate is still stencilled FRAGILE and DO NOT STAND ON END.

The photograph comes from Harry Pforzheimer, the Silicon Graphics vice president who presented the machine, and reached this collection with it.

The gold script on the front of the case reads the Spielberg Edition, 1/1. Behind the front door the original service labels are still in place.

Technical record

Silicon Graphics Indigo (Elan)

Introduced1991, R4000 models from 1993
ProcessorMIPS R3000 33 MHz; later R4000 / R4400 100–133 MHz
MemoryUp to 384 MB
GraphicsEntry, XS, XS24, XZ and Elan; Elan carries multiple Geometry Engines
Display1280 × 1024
Operating systemIRIX 4 and later
Architecture

The Indigo made hardware 3D a property of a machine that fitted beside a desk rather than under one. Its Elan graphics run SGI's Geometry Engine pipeline, transforming and lighting in silicon at a point when most workstations still did that arithmetic on the general processor. RealityEngine, SGI's heavyweight of the period, belonged to the Crimson and Onyx systems from 1992; what the Indigo established was that serious geometry acceleration did not have to arrive in a cabinet.

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Record & provenance

This Indigo Elan carries the inscription "The Spielberg Edition, 1/1." Its handover photograph, service labels, and collection history connect the machine to Steven Spielberg and the production of Jurassic Park.

Reference: ATX-OBJ-018-IMG-6166

Source: collection inventory, photographs, and notes accompanying Serious Machines (Amir Husain, 2024).

Contribute a correction or recollectionPreservation notesDownload catalog metadata

From Jurassic Park to Turok

The Indigo’s history reaches from Unix development to the movies. Spielberg’s inscribed Indigo Elan connects the collection to Amblin and Jurassic Park; the Turok Indy carries the story into Austin’s game studios. Hardware 3D gave artists new ways to make a world visible, then new ways for a player to enter it.