 The Servo Lab received Air Force sponsorship for numerical control hardware, software, and adaptive control, followed by computer-aided design, computer graphics hardware and software, and software engineering and software technology, from 1951.This continued for almost 20 years.In 1957 the last of Ross's original three research assistants, Sam Matsa, left for IBM to develop AUTOPROMT, a three-dimensional APT derivative and later (1967) co-found, with Andy Van Dam the ACM SICGRAPH.