This may be irrelevant to the discussion about pixels, but Russell Kirsch of the then-National Bureau of Standards has a discussion of early -- and I mean early -- computer graphics on the NBS SEAC:

SEAC and the Start of Image Processing at the National Bureau of Standards
MagazineIEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Year: 1998, Volume: 20, Issue: 02, Pages: 7-13
From: Members <members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Dag Spicer <dspicer@computerhistory.org>
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2021 7:04 PM
To: members <members@sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Graphics
 

External Email - Exercise Caution

Hello friends,

Just a note about computer graphics: CG pioneer and Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith has completed an amazingly comprehensive book on the origins and development of computer graphics. It is in press right now with MIT Press and is named, “A Biography of the the Pixel.” It will be available in Sept 2021. I have a pre-press version and it’s superb, its coverage of humankind’s expressiveness in art ranging from the cave paintings of Altamira to Toy Story.

Read more at MIT Press here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/biography-pixel 

To Infinity and Beyond!

Dag
——
Dag Spicer
Senior Curator
Computer History Museum

1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
dspicer@computerhistory.org