A standard interface for drawing 2D and 3D graphics on graphics hardware, released by Silicon Graphics in 1992. Processing and openFrameworks build on it.
A few of the Python developers were working on an OpenGL Python library so you could do graphics. That enabled me to do a lot of experimenting in the mid '90s.
Larry Cuba, Larry Cuba on Choreographing Form
By then, I had been working with OpenGL and shaders for four years. Through the friction of having to learn everything and research how things were working, I decided that it would be awesome to democratize this knowledge.
Patricio González Vivo, Jen Lowe and Patricio González Vivo on Democratizing Knowledge