Deborah R. Fowler
Updated: Nov 30 2013
Updated Sept 23 2018
Particles History
History of particles in CG
William Reeves (particle pioneer 1983 Siggraph paper). Please read the wiki entries here and here.
The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. is an animated short made in 1984 by the Lucas Film Computer Graphics Project (history before Pixar). Also see The Road to Pt Reyes created in 1983.
For inspiration on possible particle projects you may look at Karl Sim's Particle Dreams (1988-90) found here.
As per my pdf, Craig Reynolds is the author of Boids. In 1986 Boids was created to simulate flocking and is described in the 1987 SIGGRAPH Proceedings titled "Flocks, herds, and schools: A distributed behavioral model". OpenSteer is a C++ library written to implement this behavior. It has also been integrated into the pop tools in Houdini. Stanley & Stella Breaking the Ice introduced the behavior simulation visually as a short in 1987 at SIGGRAPH.
Particle systems are used extensively in CG - keep in mind that the emphasis now is to create realistic sims.