Nautilus:

You may not have thought much of it if you saw it in that episode of The Simpsons, in Toy Story, in your old PC screensaver, or in any of the other films and games it’s crept into over the years. Yet this unassuming object—the “Utah teapot,” as it’s affectionately known—has had an enormous influence on the history of computing, dating back to 1974, when computer scientist Martin Newell was a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah.

I knew the teapot was a popular object to do in CGI but had no idea why or its history.