SGI Octane computer graphics workstation, made by Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), manufactured in the United States, 1997-2000

The SGI Octane was a top end graphical workstation when it came to market in 1997. It was released by the American company Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) who were pioneers in computer graphics and special effects. SGI targeted users in need of high-end computer visualisation including; industrial designers, scientific companies and the entertainment industry. An SGI workstation was used to animate the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993), contributed to the first computer-animated film Toy Story (1995) and the company collaborated on the Nintendo 64 (1997), the first console to feature true 3D effects.

This Octane workstation was used at Imperial College London to process the data from a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer. This is a spectroscopic technique to observe local magnetic fields around atomic nuclei and determine the structure of organic compounds.