History of GIS The Academic Era: 1965 to 1980

History of GIS The Academic Era: 1965 to 1980
Erik Hoel Craig Gillgrass Matt McGrath June 2010 Version 19

Background Why? Focus Caveats
Random conversation in Matt McGrath’s office a couple years ago after reading Nick Chrisman’s book (we all knew very little about this topic) Focus Timeline style approach Nothing truly historical (e.g., before computers) Caveats We are not historians, merely curious ESRI development staff Intended to be low-key and fun – not scholarly Determining what is historical is quite hard …

Overview Timeline of GIS development Key academic developments
Significant contributors and personalities Commercial technologies Cold War’s influence Impact of computer technology ESRI’s role Lots of amazing trivia

Message to Our External Reviewers
Your chance to influence history! Shape how young minds perceive the past! Cement your place (and your friends) in the historical record! Expunge your enemies and the wannabees!

Law of the Famous “The famous are given most, if not all, of the credit, and a large number of others who also made key contributions to the success are largely ignored.”

C 1966 SYMAP (SYnagraphic MAPping System): a pioneering automated computer mapping application Begun by Howard Fisher at the Northwestern Technology Institute and completed in the Harvard Lab

C SYMAP Capable of producing isoline, choropleth, and proximal (Thiessen polygon) maps Used line printers as mapping devices Easy to use by 1965 standards Over 500 institutions acquired SYMAP Also believed to be commonly pirated First widely distributed package for handling geographical data

C 1966 Development of LARSYS begun at the Purdue Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing (LARS) First system capable of processing multispectral image data Became a research lab standard Later incorporated into JPL's VICAR system, used for manipulating image data that had developed out of early interplanetary space probes Peter Haggett (Univ. of Bristol) publishes Locational Analysis in Human Geography, one of the first texts on spatial data analysis Peter awarded the first (1991) Prix Vautrin Lud

C 1967 U.S. Bureau of Census DIME (Dual Independent Map Encoding) topological data format was developed Address coding guide – match streets against addresses For the New Haven Census Use Study Explicit topology for street segments with left/right address ranges, to/from nodes, etc. Topology used for data quality/integrity Eventually morphed into TIGER in the 1980s

C 1967 Donald Cooke and William Maxfield (Bureau of the Census) publish first paper in an academic journal on topological data structures The Development of a Geographic Base File and Its Use for Mapping, in Papers from the 5th Annual URISA Conference AUTOMAP (Automatic Mapping System) became operational Developed by the US Central Intelligence Agency It could produce coastlines and any form of line or point data A map compilation program at the world level Don received the 2007 ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award

C 1967 The Experimental Cartography Unit (ECU) was established at the Royal College of Art in London by David Bickmore A research unit in automated cartography Focus on using computers to streamline the making of high-quality hardcopy maps Bickmore instigated cognitive studies on effective graphic design for maps (influenced by Robinson) Developed the Oxford System of Automated Cartography with Ray Boyle Led to development of first free-cursor digitizer Collaborations with Ordnance Survey helped OS’s push to digital

C 1967 Jacques Bertin publishes Semiologie Graphique (Semiology of Graphics) Based on Bertin's practical experience as a cartographer The first and most significant attempt to provide a theoretical foundation to Information Visualization A study of different graphic techniques (shape, orientation, color, texture, volume, size) for locating and signaling quantitative variation, often over geographic space (usually France), or over time Developed a symbol scheme termed graphical variables – these include size, color, texture, form, orientation, value, and position in the 2D coordinate frame

C 1967 Roy Mullen and others at the US Geological Survey develop AUTOPLOT A system for automated map production using precision stepper motors and a plotting head driven by a computer with tape drive input IBM System/360 used to generate tape Created base map graticules on emulsion coated Mylar sheets – a very time consuming task by hand Put into production at regional offices in 1968 Richard Chorley and Peter Haggett publish Models in Geography, a key text in pushing the concept of a model as a simplification of reality in geography

1967 Clarence Glacken (Berkeley) publishes Traces on the Rhodian Shore
Related social and natural phenomena to the supposed dichotomy of man and nature Centered on three questions: Was the earth made for a reason? Does the earth shape human life? How have humans affected the earth? Recognized as one of the greatest books written by a geographer in the 20th century

1967 Integrated Civil Engineering System developed and released by MIT
COGO subsystem was aimed at coordinate geometry problems Significant milestone in civil engineering Still in used today John Nystuen (Michigan) introduces the Steinhaus Paradox into geography for distance measurement As you measure the length of a natural boundary on maps of larger scales, or make your measurements with more precise instruments, the length appears to increase

1968 Transportation Information System
C 1968 Transportation Information System Developed by Robert Tweedie of the N.Y. State Department of Transportation Based on grid manipulation It incorporated geocoded land use and travel characteristics The output of this system was line printer dot maps International Association for Mathematical Geology founded by Andrei Vistelius, William Krumbein, and others

M 1968 Apollo 8 takes first images of Earth from deep space orbiting the Moon during Christmas

1968 National Geographic Society publishes their map of the moon
Indexes hundreds of lunar features Landing spots for lunar missions Descriptions of the moon's phases Depicts the moon’s revolution in relation to the Earth and Sun How the moon affects tides on Earth

M 1968 David Sinton and the Harvard Lab develop GRID (Graphic Display of Rectangular Grid Information) Early raster-based modeling system Allowed multiple overlays of data Public Service of Colorado’s CINS (Common Identification Number System) project begins First AM/FM system Used state plane coordinate system Central land and facilities database

M 1968 Pilot MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) project completed by Henriette Avram (Library of Congress) Standards for the representation and communication of bibliographic and related information in machine-readable form Earliest significant use of metadata in computers Revolutionized librarianship

M 1968 Edsger Dijkstra publishes his "GO TO considered harmful" letter in Communications of the ACM Considered the first salvo in the structured programming wars The ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it established a policy of no longer printing articles taking such an assertive position against a coding practice “Since a number of years ago I am familiar with the observation that the quality of programmers is a decreasing function of the density of GO TO statements in the programs they produce” -Edsger Dijkstra

1968 Whole Earth Catalog first published
M 1968 Whole Earth Catalog first published Purpose was to provide education and "access to tools" in order that the reader could "find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested." Steve Jobs considered the Catalog a conceptual forerunner of a Web search engine, “sort of like Google in paperback form … it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions” Scott Morehouse said “I was influenced by the Whole Earth Catalog. That’s how I actually got into GIS. It was the whole-system approach and systems thinking that the Whole Earth Catalog epitomized.”

1968 Alan Kay (MIT) gives a presentation on the FLEX Machine
Put the FLEX computer on the back of a flat panel display to make a notebook-sized computer This was to be in the form of a compact notebook using both tablet and keyboard, a flat-screen display, GUI, and wireless networking (ARPA) Eventually acquired the name Dynabook Xerox PARC Alto workstation was originally called “the interim Dynabook” Alan received the 2003 Turing Award

Mother of All Demos Douglas Engelbart's demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) With the help of his geographically distributed team, demonstrated the workings of the NLS (which stood for oNLine System) to the 1,000 attendees Result of work done at SRI's Augmentation Research Center Demo featured the first computer mouse the public had ever seen, as well as introducing interactive text, video conferencing, teleconferencing, , and hypertext Doug received the 1997 Turing Award

M 1969 Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) was founded by Jack and Laura Dangermond Jack won the 2008 Carl Mannerfelt Medal ICA’s highest honor Jack won the 1998 Anderson Medal of Honor Association of American Geographers

ESRI – Early Years (thru 1980)
M ESRI – Early Years (thru 1980) Consultants for landuse analysis projects NOT a software company Software created as one-off solutions GRID (1969), GRIDTOPO PIOS (1970) Training part of the package Support by phone anyone who answered Newsletters to users (1979)

E 1969 Intergraph Corporation was founded by Jim Meadlock (Harvard Lab) and four others from the Saturn V rocket program in Huntsville Originally called M&S Computing Inc. Azriel Rosenfeld publishes Picture Processing by Computer, the first book on image processing and analysis

E 1969 Laser-Scan Laboratories founded in the United Kingdom by Otto Frisch, Graham Street, and John Rushbrooke from the High Energy Physics group at the Cavendish Laboratories, Cambridge Initial focus on Sweepnik film scanner hardware, then on large screen displays and accurate laser plotters

1969 Ian McHarg's landmark book Design With Nature published
First book to detail many of the concepts of GIS analysis Helped pioneer the development of map overlay techniques Overlaid transparency maps (reflecting social values placed on different environmental factors); the composite showed where development more suitable given values placed on each factor

E 1969 Other significant examples of map overlay predating Design With Nature: 1930s: US Government as part of New Deal planning (e.g., city maps with layers representing high concentrations of decrepit buildings, “red-lining”) 1940s: German Military (e.g., 20+ layers showing vegetation, soil, and road surfaces), General Plan of the East, etc. Design With Nature is still considered by some as having a greater influence on development and application of GIS than any other single event

E Ian McHarg Significant impact upon landscape architecture, land use and environmental planning, as well as GIS Also on a postage stamp

E 1969 Tom Waugh begins work on GIMMS (Geographic Information Management and Manipulation System) at the Harvard Graphics Lab A portable, high quality, vector mapping system with data manipulation and analysis capabilities Used at 300+ sites in 23 countries, it ran on a huge variety of computers ranging from PCs to a Cray YMP GIMMS can be considered the first globally-used GIS It pioneered the use of topology, user command languages, macro languages, and user control of high quality graphics In many respects, it is a prime antecedent of modern GIS

E 1969 David Harvey (Univ. of Bristol) publishes Explanation in Geography, a landmark text in the methodology and philosophy of geography Widely influential, Harvey was the world's most cited academic geographer Among the top 20 most cited authors in the humanities David awarded the 1995 Prix Vautrin Lud

E 1969 ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) begins development of ARPANET to allow resource sharing among subcontractors Wide-area packet-switching network Eventually evolved into the Internet

E 1969 Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) deliver first Interface Message Processor (IMP) to Leonard Kleinrock’s group at UCLA A packet-switching node used to connect computers to the original ARPANET The first generation of what is known as a router A ruggedized Honeywell DDP-516 minicomputer with special-purpose interfaces and software It was attached to a SDS Sigma-7 Funded by ARPA

1970 First Law of Geography by Waldo Tobler
C 1970 First Law of Geography by Waldo Tobler Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things First GIS conference sponsored by the International Geographical Union (IGU) Representatives of all known GIS systems invited 40 participants

1970 NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act of 1969)
All federal agencies and funded programs must consider environmental impact of major or significant actions Recognized as most significant motivating factor behind use of GIS by many federal agencies Ted Codd (IBM Yorktown) proposes the relational data model Ted received the 1981 Turing Award

C 1970 Torsten Hägerstrand (Lund University, Sweden) publishes What about People in Regional Science?, the first treatment of a space-time path, used in monitoring human activity A space-time path illustrates how a person navigates their way through the spatial-temporal environment Powerful and simple concept Torsten awarded the 1992 Prix Vautrin Lud

C 1970 Symposium on the Influence of the Map User on Map Design held at Queen’s University Seminal event in cognitive cartography Research presented on eye-movement studies and their possible implications for cartography Related to Robinson’s Look of Maps in 1952 where he called for the study of how people look at maps George Jenks (Univ. of Kansas) attended, later became leader in cartographic research and training in the United States (SURFACE II contouring and surface plotting package with John Davis)

1970 Map/Model developed at the University of Oregon by Samuel Arms
C 1970 Map/Model developed at the University of Oregon by Samuel Arms Prototype for early vector approach to polygon overlay Influenced by DIME (Census) and the topology “sliver problem”

C 1970 Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy at Bell Labs, develop UNIX on a Digital PDP-7 in assembler Development spurred by Thompson’s Space Travel game that he wrote for the GE-645 mainframe (the game was too slow and cost $75 per run) Ken and Dennis received the 1983 Turing Award

C Xerox PARC Founded in 1970 with mission to “create the architecture of information” Numerous significant inventions First laser printer (1971) First OO language with integrated UI – Smalltalk (1972) Client/server architecture (1973) Alto – personal computer with mouse (1973) Ethernet protocol (1973) first WYSIWIG editor (1974) First PC GUI with pop-up menus and icons (1975)

1971 Highway Inventory Information System
C 1971 Highway Inventory Information System Developed by Robert Tweedie of the N.Y. State Department of Transportation Based on a data bank that contained items such as the physical road characteristics, a road inventory, bridge records, traffic volumes Intel releases the first microprocessor (4004), led by Ted Hoff (architecture) and Federico Fagin (design) 4-bit cpu, 2250 transistors As powerful as the ENIAC $60 ($300 today)

1971 The Urban Data Management Society (UDMS) was founded
European organization to promote information systems development in local government Traditional focus on urban applications First conference held in Bonn Alan Shugart and team (IBM) invents the floppy disk 8 inches in diameter, 79.7kB capacity Silicon Valley first named by journalist Don Hoefler in Electronic News (1/11) “He was liked by some, disliked by many, and read by all.” - Publisher Mal Padgett

C 1971 Allan Schmidt named director of the Harvard Lab for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis Set the stage for the ODYSSEY era Many important software packages developed at this time (GRID, CALFORM, SYMVU, and POLYVRT) Oversaw the Harvard Computer Graphics Weeks Allan received the 2004 ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award

C 1971 "Mostly because it seemed like a neat idea." - Ray Tomlinson First network message sent by Ray Tomlinson at BBN in Cambridge, MA Tomlinson authored the program for TENEX (two parts – SNDMSG and READMAIL) The first message he sent out of the lab was to the rest of his group announcing the existence of network and explaining how to use it Also introduce the use of the sign – The sign was chosen as it was on a Model 33 teletype and it was not used in people or host names When asked to describe the contents of the first , Tomlinson said it was “something like "QWERTYUIOP"”

1972 The first Landsat satellite was launched (also known as ERTS-1)
First civilian satellite-based remote sensing Provided systematic repetitive observation of the Earth Greatly expanded number of scientists interested in multispectral analysis IBM's GFIS (Geographic Information Systems) development begun Historical descendent of the Public Service of Colorado (PSCo) CINS system (first AM/FM) GISP (General Information System for Planning) developed by the UK Department of the Environment

C 1972 Lou Skoda (Simon Fraser) and J.C. Robertson (Univ. of British Columbia) publish isodemographic map of Canadian population Utilized a mechanical method where hinged metal strips represented census divisions and provincial boundaries People were represented by ball bearings (140 people per 1/8” ball) First truly successful isodemographic map

1972 Hewlett-Packard introduces the HP-35
First scientific pocket calculator to offer basic trig and exponential functions 5.8” long and 3.2” wide - the size of William Hewlett's pocket, hence "pocket calculator" Considered the death of the slide rule Cost $395 (~$1750 today) Bill received the 1983 National Medal of Science Dave received the Degree of Uncommon Man

E 1972 Bruce Baumgart develops winged-edge data structure for representing polygon models (fixed length format, topology and geometry) More significantly, Bruce wins the Five-Man Free-For-All at First Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics at Stanford

1972 The video game Pong is released
Originally designed by Ralph Baer for his Odyssey gaming console Nolan Bushnell (Atari) played this game at a Magnavox product show in Burlingame; later, he hired young engineer Al Alcorn to design a car driving game, but when it became apparent that this was too ambitious for the time, he had Alcorn design a version of ping-pong instead The game was tested in bars in Grass Valley and Sunnyvale, California where it proved very popular Pong would revolutionize the arcade industry and launch the modern video game era

E 1972 Steve Wozniak built his "blue box" a tone generator to make free phone calls An early phreaking tool, the blue box simulates a telephone operator's dialing console – replicating the tones used to switch long-distance calls and using them to route the user's own call, bypassing the normal switching mechanism in order to place free telephone calls Sold the boxes in dormitories at the Berkeley where he studied as an undergraduate "The early boxes had a safety feature — a reed switch inside the housing operated by a magnet taped onto the outside of the box," If apprehended, you removed the magnet, whereupon it would generate off-frequency tones and be inoperable ... and you tell the police: It´s just a music box.“ - Steve Wozniak

E Clarke’s Three Laws When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

E 1973 MAGIS (Maryland Automatic Geographic Information System) begun (ESRI developed) One of the first state-wide GIS projects The USGS began development of GIRAS (Geographical Information Retrieval and Analysis System) Intended to manage and analyze large land resources databases that were being created Topological data model Randolf Franklin (Simon Fraser Univ.) authors the first Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) program in a GIS context

E 1973 David Harvey (Johns Hopkins) publishes Social Justice and the City One of the most influential books in human geography Focused on the material forces that produce cities (urban geographies), and the problems associated with them A significant contribution to Marxian theory that argues that capitalism annihilates space to insure its own reproduction

E 1973 UK Experimental Cartography Unit (ECU) publishes first computer-made map series With British Geological Survey Superpaint, a pioneering graphics program and framebuffer computer system, developed by Richard Shoup at Xerox PARC One of the earliest uses of computer technology for creative works, video editing, and computer animation

E 1973 Bob Metcalfe and David Boggs (Xerox PARC) invent the Ethernet, a standard for connecting computers over short distances Metcalfe pegs the exact day Ethernet was born: May 22, 1973, the day he circulated a memo titled "Alto Ethernet“ (r.e., Xerox Alto) Boggs offers another date as the genesis of Ethernet: November 11, 1973, the first day the system actually functioned Bob received the 2003 National Medal of Technology

E 1973 First call on a mobile cell phone made by its inventor Martin Cooper at Motorola Call placed to his rival Joel Engell, Bell Labs' head of research Resulted in a fundamental technology and communications market shift toward the person and away from the place Cooper stated that his research was inspired by watching Capt. James T. Kirk using his communicator on Star Trek James will receive the 2267 Starfleet Medal of Honor

E Butler received the 1992 Turing Award Chuck received the 2009 Turing Award Xerox Alto First workstation developed at Xerox PARC, led by Chuck Thacker and Butler Lampson First computer to use the desktop metaphor, three-button mouse, 5-key chord keyset, detachable keyboard, WYSIWIG editor, Smalltalk, and graphical user interface Not a commercial product, but thousands of units were built and were heavily used at PARC and at several universities The “interim Dynabook” (Alan Key) Greatly influenced the design of PCs, notably the Apple Lisa/Macintosh, the Apollo/Domain and the first Sun workstations Apple’s Steve Jobs visited PARC in 1979

M 1974 First building on the ESRI New York Street campus arrives

M 1974 The first AUTOCARTO conference held in December in Reston, Virginia Cosponsored by USGS and ACSM Attendees (~400) included Ray Boyle, Kurt Brassel, Fred Broome, Richard Durfee, Geoff Dutton, Robin Fegeas, Duane Marble, Bob Marx, Jim Meadlock, Hal Moellering, Thomas Poiker, David Rhind, Roger Tomlinson, and Marvin White Herbert Freeman (Rutgers) publishes Computer Processing of Line Drawing Images, key early work on the problem of anti-aliasing

1974 IBM begins development of System R
Built as a research project IBM Almaden Direct evolution of Ted Codd’s original work First implementation of Structured Query Language (SQL) First system to demonstrate that a RDBMS could provide good transaction processing performance Design decisions in System R influenced many later relational systems First customer was Pratt & Whitney in 1977

M 1974 Mike Stonebraker and Eugene Wong (Berkeley) release the Ingres RDBMS INteractive Graphics REtrieval System Initial grant was for a geo-query database system (urban planning); quickly moved toward RDBMS Source code available under the BSD license Hostility between Berkeley and IBM Almaden groups as both working on very similar things with very similar ideas; each though the other was ripping off ideas The Post Ingres project eventually morphed into Postgres Mike received the 2005 von Neumann Medal

M 1974 Raphael Finkel (Stanford) and Jon Bentley (UNC) publish the original quadtree data structure paper Partition a 2-D space by recursively subdividing it into four quadrants or regions; regions may be square or rectangular, or may have arbitrary shapes Raphael also compiled the first Jargon File (a glossary of hacker slang); the original was from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), and others of the old ARPANET AI communities (BBN, CMU, and WPI)

M 1974 TCP/IP protocol suite developed by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn (DARPA Information Processing Technology Office) Military computer networking standard in 1982 ARPANET standard in 1983 The basis for the modern Internet Vinton and Robert received the 2004 Turing Award

M 1974 Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL) produces the Oak Ridge Regional Modeling Information System (ORRMIS) Project begun in 1969, NSF funding Comprehensive geographic data management system, led by Jerome Dobson and Richard Durfee Based upon raster structure with 2.7 acre cell size (3.75 arc seconds of latitude and longitude) Data gathered at various resolutions, stored in a nested hierarchy Intended to support regional modeling (e.g., coal strip mining and associated environmental problems)

1974 Ted Nelson publishes Computer Lib/Dream Machines First sentence:
“A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.” - Ted Nelson Ted Nelson publishes Computer Lib/Dream Machines First sentence: “Any nitwit can understand computers, and many do. Unfortunately, due to ridiculous historical circumstances, computers have been made a mystery to most of the world” Considered an astonishingly prescient book that is one of the tap roots of the soon to be born microcomputer and cyber cultures Counterculture computing E.g., Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club Project Xanadu – first hypertext project (term coined in 1965, along with hypermedia) 1960 project started, 1998 first incomplete release …

1974 The Tektronix 4014 graphics terminal
The Mean Green Flashin’ Machine - Tek 4014 1974 The Tektronix 4014 graphics terminal Prior to the 4014, most computer graphics was done with vector graphics displays that continuously repainted the image under computer control Required a very high bandwidth connection to the computer Having local memory in the display that stores a value for each pixel was prohibitively expensive in the 1970s Problem solved by developing the Direct View Bistable Storage Tube - the vectors were only written once The CRT itself remembered the data The entire image had to be erased as a whole

E 1975 Thomas Poiker and Nick Chrisman from the Harvard Lab publish Cartographic Data Structures in The American Cartographer Seminal paper on spatial data structures POLYVRT

1975 The MITS Altair 8800 was released
Microcomputer based on the Intel 8080, designed by Ed Roberts Sold as a kit through Popular Electronics The Altair is widely recognized as the spark that led to the personal computer revolution Named after Star Trek destination by Les Solomon’s young daughter Harvard students Bill Gates (19) and Paul Allen wrote Altair Basic, their first product (4KB interpreter)

1975 The Homebrew Computer Club formed
An early computer hobbyist club in Silicon Valley were people traded parts, circuits, and information pertaining to DIY construction of computing devices Several very high-profile hackers and IT entrepreneurs emerged from its ranks, including Adam Osborne, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniac The newsletter was one of the most influential forces in the formation of the culture of Silicon Valley; it initiated the idea of the Personal Computer

E 1976 MLMIS (Minnesota Land Management Information System), another significant state-wide GIS, began Research project at the Center for Urban and Regional Analysis, University of Minnesota Based upon digital land use map prepared from aerial photography (raster data structure – 40 acre cells, appropriate with US Public Land Survey System) Very extensive natural resources database

E 1976 Waldo Tobler (UC Santa Barbara) publishes Analytical Cartography in the American Cartographer Described the agenda for analytical cartography – geographic data models, terrain modeling, spatial interpolation, and automated generalization Topics steeped in theory and mathematics Much of the underpinnings of GIS A profound effect on American academic cartography

1976 Cray Research releases the Cray-1
$8.8 million ($32 million today) 160 MIPS, 136 MFLOPS 80MHz, 64-bit arch. vector processor Over 80 sold IBM’s Blue Gene/L (Lawrence Livermore) is 596 TFLOPS (peak) 4 million times faster Blue Gene/Q will be 20 Petaflops 160 million times faster in 2011

E 1976 X.25 packet switching network standard developed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was approved In 1974, formed the basis of the SERCnet network between British academic and research sites (later became JANET) Used for the first dial-in public access networks, such as CompuServe and Tymnet Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Apple I was the first product ($666.66), each hand built by Woz (he liked repeating numbers)

E 1976 Bill Gates writes the Open Letter to Hobbyists where he expresses dismay at the rampant copyright infringement taking place in the hobbyist community, particularly with regard to his company's software (Altair BASIC) Gates asserted that such widespread copying in effect discourages developers from investing time and money into creating quality software The reaction was strong – many felt the software should be bundled with the machine and the current distribution method was Gates' problem; others questioned the cost of developing software

1977 Endicott House GIS Symposium
More formally, the First International Advanced Study Symposium on Topological Data Structures for Geographic Information Systems Invited symposium with deliberately international scope 57 papers distributed one month in advance; all participants assumed to have read each paper Papers presented by discussant, not author 77 participants – stimulating discussions, not passive lectures Attendees included: Jon Bentley, Brian Berry, Nick Chrisman, Jim Corbett, Bruce Cook, Donald Cooke, Howard Fisher, Mike Goodchild, Stephen Guptill, Ben Kuipers, David Mark, Scott Morehouse, Donna Peuquet, Tom Poiker, Carl Reed, Azriel Rosenfeld, Mike Shamos, David Sinton, Waldo Tobler, Roger Tomlinson, Marvin White Signaled a change in generations – papers often presented by students of the GIS pioneers

1977 USGS develops the Digital Line Graph (DLG) spatial data format
Regional Institute for Environmental Protection in Baden-Wuerttemberg was the first federal state to develop a landscape database (LDB) ITT Visual Information Solutions (ITT VIS) created as a subsidiary of ITT Oracle founded by Larry Ellison with $1400 Originally named Software Development Labs When Ellison worked at Ampex on a database for the CIA, he named it Oracle

E 1977 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces the VAX 11/ bit minicomputer Commercial pioneer in using virtual memory Development led by Gordon Bell VAX (or Virtual Address eXtension) was seen as a 32-bit extension to the older 16-bit PDP family VAX/VMS was the native OS 11/780 used as baseline in CPU performance benchmarks with its 1 MIPS speed (1 VUP) Gordon received the 1991 National Medal of Technology

C 1978 ERDAS (Earth Resources Data Analysis System) was founded by Lawrie Jordan and Bruce Rado (Harvard Lab) and others scientists from Georgia Tech MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System) released; first full function, fully interactive vector-based GIS Funded by EPA and US Fish and Wildlife Service

C 1978 Roger received the 2006 National Medal of Technology Global Positioning System (GPS) first experimental Block-1 satellite launched (led by Roger Easton) Bill Joy (Berkeley) releases first version of BSD UNIX Second BSD version launched a few months later with the full kernel source code Became the backbone of the Internet and introduced the open source concept

1978 First Harvard Computer Graphics Week
Attracted many influential pioneers of computer mapping and GIS (often people), including: Fred Broome, Nick Chrisman, James Corbett, David Cowen, Jack Dangermond, Geoffrey Dutton, Howard Fisher, Randolph Franklin, Mike Goodchild, Stephen Guptill, Duane Marble, Scott Morehouse, Thomas Poiker, Azriel Rosenfeld, David Sinton, Waldo Tobler, Marvin White Hybrid between an academic conference and a trade show

C 1978 The first SPAM was sent from THUERK at DEC-Marlboro (Gary Thuerk) Marketing the DEC System 20 to all users of the ARPANET on the west coast (~600 people) Gary remains unapologetic to this day

C 1978 British General Post Office, Western Union and Tymnet create the first international packet switched network (International Packet Switched Service, or IPSS) AM / FM International founded Group from Public Service Company of Colorado and others decided to hold the first "Keystone Conference," which attracted 32 attendees

1979 ODYSSEY GIS developed at the Harvard Lab
C 1979 ODYSSEY GIS developed at the Harvard Lab The first significant vector-based analysis package with efficient polygon overlay Considered by some to be the prototype contemporary vector GIS Began as research into data structures and algorithms for spatial analysis in Denis White and Nick Chrisman started the work; later joined by Scott Morehouse, James Dougenik, and Randolph Franklin

C 1979 Geoff Dutton (Harvard Lab) creates the first animated thematic map as an integral hologram A rotating celluloid cylinder within which a 3D demographic map of the United States hovers US Census counts of population by county from 1790 to 1970 were displayed as statistical surfaces Grids were interpolated to one year intervals (181 maps) These were filmed in sequence and transferred to integral holograms, wrapped around a plexiglass cylinder 18” across Considered by many the highlight of the 1979 Harvard Computer Graphics Week Conference

C 1979 Oracle releases the first commercial SQL Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) Shipped before IBM’s System R First release was Version 2; Larry Ellison decided no one buys Version 1

1979 Creation of SICAD GIS in Germany
PlanGraphics founded by John Antenucci Initial focus on automated mapping/facilities management (AM/FM) systems Universal Systems Ltd. founded in New Brunswick, Canada (later renamed CARIS) A spinoff from research into data structures and computer-aided cartography at the University of New Brunswick's Dept. of Survey Engineering CARIS (Computer Aided Resource Information System) was their first software product

C 1979 Domestic Information Display System (DIDS) developed in a joint effort between NASA, the Census Bureau, and 25 other federal agencies Improved accessibility of locational info in large databases Applied Chloroplethic mapping to data contributed by many federal agencies NASA imagery was integrated with state, congressional district, county, and census-tract level map boundary and demographic, economic, and other attribute data Presented at the Harvard Computer Graphics Week in 1978

C 1979 VisiCalc developed for the Apple II by Dan Bricklin (Harvard Business) and Bob Frankston (MIT) – the first spreadsheet program for personal computers It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool Likely motivated IBM to enter the PC market which they had been ignoring More powerful clones like Lotus and Excel followed

E 1980 The RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) project started under Dave Patterson and Carlo Sequin (Berkeley) Gaining CPU performance through the use of pipelining and aggressive register windowing RISC chips have far fewer transistors dedicated to the core logic, allowing increase the size of the register set and increase internal parallelism RISC-I processor delivered in 1982; contained 50% fewer transistors yet outperformed all other CISC microprocessors John Hennessy (Stanford) started a similar project called MIPS in 1981 Dave became a member in 2006 of the National Academy of Sciences

E 1980 Seagate Technology created the first hard disk drive for microcomputers, the ST506 The disk held 5 megabytes of data, five times as much as a standard floppy disk, and fit in the space of a floppy disk drive (cost - $1500, or $300/MB) IBM announced the 3380 DASD Price ranged from $81,000 to $142,200 The base model stored 2.5 GB of data, larger models 20GB IBM sold over 100, s, generating tens of billions of dollars in revenue making the 3380 one of IBM’s most successful products of all time

References – Personal Communications
Nick Chrisman (Univ. of Laval) John Cloud (USGS) David Cowen (Univ. of S. Carolina) Teresa Dolan (ESRI) Geoff Dutton (Spatial Effects) Sara Fabrikant (Univ. of Zurich) Paul Hardy (ESRI-UK) Harlan Heimgartner (ESRI) Hugh Keegan (ESRI) Logan Hardinson (ESRI) Mike Kevany (PlanGraphics) Robert Laurini (INSA Lyon) David Maguire (ESRI) Scott Morehouse (ESRI) Bill Moreland (ESRI) Robert Seifert (ESRI) Tina Skousen (ESRI) Bernt Wahl (UC Berkeley) Peter Woodsford (1Spatial) Pusheng Zhang (Microsoft) John (docent, USS Midway)

History of GIS The Academic Era: 1965 to 1980

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History of GIS The Academic Era: 1965 to 1980

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