1. History of GIS The Commercial Era: 1980 to 2010
Erik Hoel
Craig Gillgrass
Matt McGrath
June 2010
Version 19

2. 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 …

3. 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

4. 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!

5. 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.”

6. 1981 IBM releases the Personal Computer (model 5150)
Development led by Don Estridge; he realized that cost effectiveness required 3rd party hardware and software
Starting price of $1565 ($3700 today)
Intel 8088 CPU (4.77MHz, 16 bit)
16KB RAM
160KB 5.25” floppy drive
63.5W power supply
PC named the Time’s 1982 Man of the Year

7. 1981
Adam Osborne completed the first portable computer, the Osborne I, which weighed 24 pounds and cost $1,795
The machine featured a 5-inch display, 64 kB of memory, a modem, and two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives
The machine was a big success, and the follow-ups looked pretty promising, but in 1983 Osborne preannounced the next generation before it was built, cutting the feet out from under the existing machines and triggering the collapse of the company a few months later
The 'Osborne Effect‘ became a textbook example of how not to do it

8. 1981
Alpine and Honda develop the Electro Gyrocator (first commercial car navigation system)
It did not use GPS, but instead had an experimental gas gyroscope that could detect both rotation and movement
Maps were placed inside the unit and would scroll past an illumination screen as the car traveled
It was an option on the Accord ($2,746); ¼ value of the car
It is unclear whether any units were actually delivered to customers

9. 1981 ESRI held its first User ConferenceM
1981
ESRI held its first User Conference
Attended by 16 people at the ESRI campus in Redlands
Representing 11 user sites

10. 1982 ESRI releases ARC/INFO 1.0M
1982
New Brunswick Forestry first customer
ESRI releases ARC/INFO 1.0
Followed CGIS idea of separating attribute and locational information
Combined a standard RDBMS (INFO) to handle attribute data with specialized software to handle objects stored as arcs (ARC)
A toolbox with command-driven, product-oriented user interface
First GIS to take advantage of super-minis (Prime; then IBM, VAX, DG)
Took 9 months to develop (10/81 – 6/82)

11. ESRI – Turnkey Systems ESRI would come to your site and in one week:
Install the hardware (including its OS)
Install the software
Run the communication lines
Install the plotter
Install the printer
Install the digitizing tablet
“Intro to ARC/INFO” training
2 weeks, comprehensive, on site
Phone support by anyone who answered the phone

12. 1982 The SPOT Image Company founded
First commercial company established to distribute geographic information derived from Earth Observation Satellites worldwide
University of Maryland obtains first academic ARC/INFO license
Nova Scotia Land Survey Institute (COGS) was one of first schools to get an ARC/INFO license

13. ESRI – First 10 Customers*
State of Alaska – Fish and Game
State of Alaska – Dept. of Natural Resources
Municipality of Anchorage, AK
State of Arizona – Water Resources
State of Arizona – Land Dept.
City of Albuquerque – Information Systems
University of South Carolina – Geography (site)
State University of New York – Geography (site)
AT&T – IT GIS (nee Bellsouth)
Boise Cascade 
*According to customer number in SAP; ESRI did business with many customers for a long time before numbering system put in place.

14. 1982
First Soviet GLONASS experimental Block-1 navigation satellite launched
Global coverage completed in 1995
A second generation satellite navigation system, improving on the Tsiklon system
Provided positioning accuracy of 55–70 m horiz, ~70 m vert
15-year old Steve Juraszek (Hero) of Arlington Heights, IL, plays Defender for 16 hours, 34 min, on the same quarter
His score: 15,963,100

15. C
1982
Development of GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) began at the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Labs
Originally called FHGIS (Fort Hood Geographic Information System)
Raster-based GIS program
Developed on a VAX 11/780

16. 1982 Sun Microsystems founded Silicon Graphics founded Adobe founded
Stanford graduate students Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy, and Bill Joy (Berkeley)
Silicon Graphics founded
James Clark (EE professor at Stanford), along with a group of seven grad students and research staff from Stanford
Adobe founded
John Warnock and Charles Geschke from Xerox PARC
Autodesk founded by John Walker
Released AutoCAD, one of the first CAD packages to run on a PC

17. C
1982
BELLMAC-32A released (Bell Labs) – first single-chip fully 32-bit microprocessor (32-bit data paths, buses, and addresses)
Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon invents the smiley, the first emoticon

18. C
Emoticons
Three years earlier (April 12, 1979), Kevin McKenzie (USC) of Arpanet's MsgGroup:
Original message lost until September 2002
Retrieved from old VAX backup tape from 1982
Ambrose Bierce (1912), the snigger point - for ironical sentences

19. E
1982
“It was some dumb little practical joke”
- R. Skrenta
First large scale computer virus (Elk Cloner) hatched by Rich Skrenta
Student at Mt. Lebanon Sr. High School near Pittsburgh
Developed on an Apple II
A boot sector virus on floppies
Every 50th boot, a poem would appear, saying in part, "It will get on all your disks; it will infiltrate your chips."
The first computer virus (Creeper) was detected on ARPANET in the early 1970s - Creeper gained access via a modem and copied itself to the remote system and displayed 'I'M THE CREEPER : CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.'

20. E
1983
ETAK digital mapping company was formed by Stanley Honey and seven others from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
Caliper Corp founded (developer of TransCAD)
ESRI released ARC/INFO 2.0
NETWORK
ARC COGO

21. 1983
Ronald Reagan announces GPS signals would be available for civilian use after the Soviet downing of a Korean Air Lines 747 (KAL 007)
Strayed into Soviet airspace due to navigational errors; 269 people killed

22. 1983 Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program released by Mitch Kapor and Lotus
First “killer app” for the IBM PC
Contributed significantly to the success of the PC in the corporate environment
The Domain Name System (DNS) is invented by Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris
A hierarchical naming system for computers connected to the Internet
It associates information with domain names assigned to each of the participants; it translates domain names into the numerical ids associated with networking equipment

23. 1983
Edward Tufte published The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Presented the Theory of Data Graphics with its four main aspects: 1. elimination of "chartjunk"; 2. maximization of "data-ink"; 3. multifunctioning graphical elements; and 4. high data density
Tufte considered Charles Minard’s 1861 map of Napoleon's Russian campaign the best statistical graphic ever drawn
Changed the way that people thought about the presentation of informational graphics

24. E
1984
The first International Spatial Data Handling Symposia (SDH) was held, organized by Kurt Brassel (University of Zurich)
Roger Tomlinson gave the keynote address
Bentley Systems founded by Keith and Barry Bentley
Marble, Calkins, and Peuquet's "Basic Readings in Geographic Information Systems" was published
Considered the first accessible source of info about GIS
Apple releases the Macintosh

25. E
1984
Toni Guttman (Berkeley) publishes the original R-tree spatial data structure paper
Multidimensional extension to B-trees
4103 citations

26. 1984
Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog) states at the first Hackers‘ Conference:
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
A corollary from the 2008 RSA Conference:
Information wants to be free, and code wants to be wrong.

27. M
1985
Bjarne Stroustrup (Bell Labs) published The C++ Programming Language after inventing the language
Work begun in 1979 when attempting to add Simula-like features to C (termed C with Classes)
Later becomes the dominant Object-Oriented language
Symbolics registered the first .COM domain name
Microsoft released Windows 1.0

28. 1985 ETAK produced the first automated car navigation system
ESRI released ARC/INFO 3.0
CLEAN and BUILD

29. M
1985
Ozone hole was confirmed by measurements from the Nimbus-7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer
TOMS launched in 1978
Ozone hole first noted by British scientists
Led to the first Montreal Protocol, where forty nations agreed to a 50% reduction in the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by 1999

30. M
“Back when GIS was fun!”
- Bill Moreland
Arc Mystery
A port of Mystery Mansion text-based adventure game to ARC/INFO 3
The object was to find one's way through a run-down, mansion in order to find various treasures, solve a murder, sleep with the maid (if very lucky), and avoid getting killed before the mansion is destroyed by fire at midnight to end the game
Also known as the “maze game” due to difficult maze that was part of the game
Removed from ARC/INFO once Support got calls asking how to get out of the maze

31. M
1986
BBC Domesday Project, the first multimedia GIS application, completed by David Rhind, Openshaw, and others
The original Domesday Book was the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086, executed for William the Conqueror
New multimedia edition compiled between 1984 and 1986
It included a new 'survey' of the United Kingdom - people (mostly school kids) wrote about their daily lives
Over 1 million people participated in the project
One of first attempts to publish governement statistics and data collected by kids in an accessible way
Linked with maps, many color photos, statistical data, video, and 'virtual walks‘
David received the 2004
ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award

32. C
1986
MapInfo was founded by four students from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Peter Burrough's "Principles of Geographic Information Systems for Land Resources Assessment" published
First textbook on GIS
The first SPOT satellite was launched
COGS (Nova Scotia College of Geographic Sciences) formed from the Nova Scotia Land Survey Institute

33. ESRI - 1986 ESRI released PC ARC/INFO Ran on IBM PC/AT under DOS 3.1
PC version of INFO
Used INFO until 1990, then dBASE
Technical Support becomes a formal department with two fulltime staff
Training - new training center
Single two week course

34. C
1987
GEOVIEW developed by Tom Waugh and Healey at the University of Edinburgh
Represented all data within an RDBMS (both spatial and non-spatial), using a very simple schema – an ENTITY table and an ATTRIBUTES table
Highly normalized representation
The first GIS/LIS Conference was held as part of the ACSM/ASPRS Conference in Baltimore

35. C
1987
The International Journal of Geographical Information Systems (IJGIS) was first published
The IDRISI Project was started by Ron Eastman at Clark University
Popular as an academic tool for teaching the principle theories behind GIS
SPANS GIS was released by Tydac

36. 1987 Joint Resolution of Congress establishes Geography Awareness Week
The third week of each November, promoting the importance of geography education in the United States

37. C
1987
Association of American Geographers creates the GIS Specialty Group
Largest specialty group in AAG
First ESRI User Conference in Palm Springs
ESRI releases ARC/INFO 4
AML
UNIX Workstations
UNIX installs done by user
1,500 ARC/INFO systems in use

38. The Geocoding Experiment
Peter Gould (Penn State) sent envelopes to 34 colleagues worldwide with Waldo Tobler’s (UCSB) geographical coordinates
Test universality of geocoding standards
34º26’41”N, 119º48’26”W
Four letters arrived
Unexpected routing
Peter awarded the 1993
Prix Vautrin Lud

39. C
1988
Smallworld was founded by ten researchers with experience in computer graphics and databases from the CADCentre in Cambridge, and Cambridge Interactive Systems – the producer of Medusa (CAD)
Joe Becker (Xerox) published a draft proposal for an "international/multilingual text character encoding system, tentatively called Unicode"
Unicode 2.0 in 1996 removed the 16-bit limitation
Klingon remains unsupported due to lack of real-world use
New ESRI regional offices: Olympia, Charlotte

40. C
1988
The GIS-L internet list-server was started by Ezra Zubrow, SUNY Buffalo
The first public release of the U.S. Bureau of Census TIGER (Topographically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) digital data product
First IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) satellite is launched - IRS-1A
New ESRI regional office: Minneapolis

41. 1988
Alan Saalfeld (Census Bureau) proposes automated vector conflation in his paper Conflation: Automated Map Compilation
Using geometrical similarities between spatial attributes (e. g., location, shape, etc.) to eliminate the spatial inconsistency between two overlapping vector maps
Saalfeld discussed mathematical theories to support the automatic process
Delaunay triangulation is an effective strategy to partition the domain space into triangles (influence regions) to define local adjustments

42. C
1988
The Morris worm was created by Robert Morris (Cornell PhD student)
One of the first computer worms distributed via the Internet to get mainstream media attention
Intended to estimate size of Internet, but programming bug resulted in a virulent denial of service attack
Resulted in the first conviction under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
The worm was released from MIT to disguise the fact that the worm originally came from Cornell
Morris is now an associate professor at MIT

43. C
1989
Stan Aronoff's Geographic Information Systems: A Management Perspective published
First Symposium on the Design and Implementation of Large Spatial Databases (SSD) held in Santa Barbara
Association for Geographic Information (AGI) established in the UK based upon the Chorley Committee report of 1987

44. M
1989
The WWW (World Wide Web) was created by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, for CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) in Geneva
Concepts introduced:
HTML
HTTP
URL
Robert received the Order of Leopold from King Albert II
Tim received the Order of Merit from
Queen Elizabeth

45. M
1989
The NCGIA (National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis) was established through NSF grant
University of California at Santa Barbara
SUNY Buffalo
University of Maine at Orono
Intergraph launches MGE
ESRI released ARC/INFO 5.0
New ESRI regional offices: Boston, Washington DC, Denver, Austin
300 ESRI employees

46. 1989
Guido van Rossum (BDFL – Benevolent Dictator for Life) begins development of the Python programming language
A "hobby" programming project that kept him occupied during the week around Christmas 1989
Intended as a descendant of ABC that would appeal to Unix/C hackers
Python is often used as a scripting language for web apps
Python was intended to be a highly readable, with an uncluttered visual layout

47. 1990 MAP (Map Analysis Package) developed by Dana Tomlin (Harvard)
A raster-based GIS based upon David Sinton’s IMGRID as well as Ian McHarg’s map overlay concepts
Keyword approach of IMGRID was changed to an English-using command language
Many features for easy raster manipulation
Based upon PhD research at Yale
Eventually installed at several thousand locations

48. 1990 The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) established by OMB
Interagency committee that promotes the coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data on a national basis
Charged with coordinating the development of the NSDI
The American Cartographer renamed Cartography and Geographic Information Systems
Reflected desire to be more inclusive of GIS
Later in 1996 renamed Cartography and Geographic Information Science

49. 1990
Mitsubishi and Pioneer release the first GPS-based auto navigation systems in Japan

50. M
1991
The first ERS (European Remote Sensing) satellite launched – ERS-1
Harvard Lab closed
Visual Basic 1.0 introduced with a drag and drop design for creating application user interfaces
Derived from a prototype form generator developed by Alan Cooper – Project Ruby
Linux kernel first released by Linus Torvalds (Finland)

51. M
1991
Seen as the turning point in the GIS industry due to the beginning of mass acceptance of GIS
ESRI released ArcView 1 and ARC/INFO 6.0
Major reengineering
Redesigned menu-interface
Dynamic segmentation
Enhanced cartographic tools
GRID extension for raster modeling

52. M
1992
DCW (Digital Chart of the World) released by US Defense Mapping Agency (now NGA)
First integrated 1:1million scale database with global coverage
$10M contract to ESRI (awarded 1989) – resulted in large increase in ESRI employees
First KH-12 reconnaissance satellite
Presumed similar to an enlarged Hubble Space Telescope
Estimated 10cm resolution

53. 1992 IBM demonstrates Simon at COMDEX
World’s first smartphone ($899; $1300 today)
Contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, , send and receive fax, and games
No physical buttons to dial with, customers used a touch-screen to select phone numbers
Text entered with an on-screen "predictive" keyboard
Low-end by today's standards

54. 1992 OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) developed by Silicon Graphics
Standard cross-language, cross-platform API for 2D and 3D graphic applications
Direct3D is competitor on Windows platforms
CPGIS (Intl. Assoc. of Chinese Professionals in GIS) formed to foster cooperation between Chinese GIS professionals worldwide
Samba developed by Andrew Tridgell (PhD student at the Australian National University)
Allows a host to interact with a Windows client as if it is a Windows file and print server

55. M
1993
The first web-based interactive map (Xerox PARC Map Viewer) was developed by Steve Putz
Implemented as a Perl script
Accepted requests for map renderings and returns an HTML document including an inlined GIF image
Mosaic, the first popular web browser, released by NCSA (National Center for Supercomputer Applications)
Written by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina

56. 1993 The GPS system achieved initial operational capability
A complete constellation of 24 satellites
A mere 30+ years after TRANSIT
First ACM-GIS workshop in Arlington, Virginia
First COSIT (Conference on Spatial Information Theory) in Elba, Italy
EUROGI founded
Mission was to maximize the availability and effective use of geographic information throughout Europe

57. M
1993
Windows NT was released, first version to use 32-bit flat virtual memory on 32-bit processors
Opened the door to migration from Unix workstations to the PC platform for high end applications such as GIS
Intel released the Pentium – their first superscalar x86 processor
The Pentium FDIV bug was later discovered by Thomas Nicely (Lynchburg College) in October 1994
FDIV is the x86 assembly language instruction for floating-point division

58. ESRI Professional ServicesM
ESRI Professional Services
1970’s
Site and Parcel Mapping
Environmental Analysis
Facility Siting
1980’s
City, State and Regional Mapping
Land Capability/Suitability Analysis
New Town Siting and Planning
1990’s
National Mapping/Database Development
Natural Resource Analysis and Management
Utility/Facility Mapping and Analysis
Rent-A-Tech Program
21st Century
Global Database Development
Nautical/Aeronautical Data Management
Enterprise Design and Implementation
EEAP/BPAP Programs
Application Solution Development

59. M
1994
NSDI (National Spatial Data Infrastructure) created in the U.S. by executive order of Bill Clinton
Spatial data is considered a national capital asset
The NSDI manages the distribution of these assets across all interconnected systems, federal and private sector, and analyzes it to determine the impact of the world economically, physically, and socially upon the US
Use of SDTS (Spatial Data Transfer Standard) becomes mandatory for US Federal Agencies
Developed by USGS between
OpenGIS Consortium formed

60. M
1994
ISO/TC 211 technical committee formed within ISO, tasked with covering the areas of digital geographic information and geomatics
Simple feature access
Reference models
Spatial and temporal schemas
Location-based services
Metadata
Web feature and map services
Classification systems

61. 1994 MapServer web GIS (Minnesota) begins development
Intended to support web-based delivery of forestry data
Java applets, initially UNIX/Linux based
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee
Founded at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) with support from the European Commission and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Standards include: CGI, CSS, HTML, SOAP, SVG, WSDL, XML, XPath, and XQuery

62. M
1994
First Blog created by Claudio Pinhanez at the MIT Media Lab website
Basically the first web page in an online-diary format
Other early bloggers included Justin Hall, Carolyn Burke, and Bryon Sutherland
Technorati (search engine for searching blogs) is currently tracking million blogs
ESRI released ARC/INFO 7.0 and ArcView 2.0

63. ArcView GIS 1.0 (late 1991) 2.0 (1994) 3.0 (1996) 3.2 (1999)M
ArcView GIS
1.0 (late 1991)
Easy to use desktop display and query software
Shipped 10,000 copies in first half of 1992
2.0 (1994)
Authorized Training Program (ATP)
3.0 (1996)
Shapefiles
Avenue
Extensions
3.2 (1999)
ModelBuilder

64. 1995 RADARSAT developed and launched by Canada
An Earth observation satellite with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to monitor environmental change and support resource sustainability
Orbit path repeats every 24 days
Britain’s Ordnance Survey achieves first complete digital map coverage of a country (Great Britain) in a database
230,000 maps (1:1250, 1:2500, 1:10,000)

65. 1995 NGDF (National Geospatial Data Framework) launched in the UK
The UK’s spatial data infrastructure
Improve knowledge of existing GI and encourage easier access to it
Standards (e.g., metadata) and Services
Public and private sector
Java programming language released by Sun Microsystems
Originally developed by James Gosling
Applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java Virtual Machine (JVM)

66. C
1995
FGDC Metadata Standard required for all federal agencies in the US
All new geospatial data created by federal agencies must be documented in FGDC and provided through a National Geospatial Clearinghouse
Oracle releases SDO (Spatial Data Option) on top of Oracle 7
ESRI employment reaches 1000 people

67. C
1996
First generation Internet-based GIS products released by major vendors (Autodesk, ESRI, Intergraph, and MapInfo)
MapQuest internet mapping service launched by Donnelly Geosystems
Within the first week of its launch, both of the company’s servers went down; within three months, 50 servers needed to handle demand
ESRI expands the Redlands campus across New York St. with the addition of a three-story R&D Center (Building M)
MapObjects 1.0 released

68. 1996
The first version of the Apache HTTP Server is released by Rob McCool
Played a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web
By 2009 it became the first web server to surpass the 100 million web site milestone
Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape web server

69. 1996
First working draft of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) spec published by W3C
Compiled by a working group of eleven with technical lead James Clarke
XML is a profile of the SGML ISO standard; most of XML comes from SGML unchanged
US Federal Communication Commission mandates that all cellular carriers identify the location of an E-911 caller to within m
Key driver in development of location based services

70. 1996
Palm released the Pilot 1000, the first successful personal digital assistant (PDA), invented by Jeff Hawkins (Palm founder)
Benefited from the ill-fated earlier attempts to create a popular handheld computing platform by Go and Apple
Originally an attempt at better handwriting recognition software, but existing hardware found lacking
Modem manufacturer U.S. Robotics provided financial backing and manufacturing expertise

71. 1997
GRASS development taken over from CERL by Baylor University and other academics

72. ESRI - 1997 First User Conference to be held in San Diego
ArcView 3.0 released
Work begun on ArcGIS
The numbers
58,000 calls handled by Support
100,000 ARC/INFO seats
200,000 ArcView seats
20,000 SDE seats

73. E
1998
TerraServer project started as a joint research project between Aerial Images, Microsoft, the USGS, and Compaq
Aerial Images wanted to sell imagery online
Microsoft Research needed a large database to demonstrate the capabilities of its new database software
Google founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Stanford PhD students)

74. E
1998
The Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE) was established
Promote academic teaching and research on GIS at the European level
Facilitate networking activities between geographic information laboratories at the European level
AM / FM International changes name to GITA (Geospatial Information and Technology Association)

75. 1999 First GIS Day IKONOS launched
November 19th
Grassroots GIS education event
1.2 million participants worldwide
IKONOS launched
First commercial high resolution imaging satellite
90cm resolution panchromatic and multi-spectral images
Bill Gates net worth briefly surpasses $101B

76. 1999 National Geographic’s Map Machine debuts
Napster created by Shawn Fanning to enable online peer-to-peer MP3 music sharing
Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman publish The Grid - Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure
A metaphor for making computer power as easy to access as an electric power
CPU scavenging and volunteer computing were popularized by (2.4 million cpus in 234 countries; 684 TeraFLOPS)

77. 1999
Geography Markup Language (GML) ideas first presented to OGC by Ron Lake
An encoding of spatial features in XML
Serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic transactions on the Internet
Contains many primitives, including: feature, geometry, topology, time, coordinate ref. system

78. ESRI - 1999 ArcInfo 8 ArcSDE MapObjects 2.0 ArcIMS 3.0
Reengineering of its GIS software as a large collection of C++/COM objects
ArcCatalog, ArcMap, and ArcToolbox desktop apps
Geodatabase data management
ArcSDE
Storage of spatial and tabular data in commercial DBMS products
MapObjects 2.0
ArcIMS 3.0

79. 2000 Microsoft releases MapPoint
Originally developed from Expedia Streets which was included with Office 97
Intended for business users but competed in the low-end GIS market
First GPS-located Geocache is placed by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, OR
Original stash contained software, videos, books, food, money, and a slingshot
Currently over 800,000 registered geocaches

80. M
2000
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) obtained digital elevation models on a near-global scale from 56°S to 60°N
The most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Earth to date
A specially modified radar system flew onboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour during the STS-99
The technique employed is known as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar
30m cell resolution

81. 2000
United States makes a more accurate GPS signal available for civilian use
Improved the precision of civilian GPS from ~100m to ~20m
C#, a Java-like programming language, announced by Microsoft
Led by Anders Hejlsberg
Originally called COOL (C-like Obj. Oriented Lang.)
Dot.Com bubble bursts
NASDAQ hit high of in March 10th

82. 2001 More than 1 million users of GIS
5 million estimated casual users
GIS marketplace > $7 billion
>10% growth per year
PostGIS released by Refractions Research under the GNU GPL

83. M
2001
Keyhole launched as spin-off of Intrinsic Graphics (in reference to KH recon satellites)
David Bowman shuts down the HAL 9000 while in orbit around Jupiter
Wikipedia founded by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales
Wales defined the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia
Sanger had idea of using a wiki
Currently over 3M English articles, only 166 in Klingon

84. ESRI - 2001 ArcGIS 8.1 released The numbers: Training
Over 10,000 users at Users Conference
Over 100,000 users
Over 1,000,000 licensed software seats
Training
Instructor-Led Training: 15,271 students in 1649 classes
Virtual Campus: 122,000 members from 178 countries
29 ESRI Press Books
Support
65 analysts handled 46,052 calls

85. 2002
OGC releases the initial Web Feature Service Interface Standard (WFS)
An interface allowing requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls
Amazon launches Amazon Web Services
Data centers were using little of their capacity in order to handle demand spikes

86. 2003
Development of the Galileo navigational satellite system was agreed upon by the European Union and the European Space Agency
Free service has accuracy of <4 m horiz, <8 m vert
Fee-based service has accuracy of <1 m

87. 2004 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) formed
Biggest GIS user in the world
NIMA renamed to NGA to emphasize geo-intelligence
First GEOINT Symposium held in New Orleans
Sponsored by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF)

88. M
2004
ESRI released ArcGIS 9.0
ArcGIS Engine, for embedding GIS functionality into desktop and field applications
ArcGIS Server, a centrally managed framework for serving enterprise GIS applications

89. 2004 First Web 2.0 conference in San FranciscoM
2004
First Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco
Tim O’Reilly described it as “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform”
Doesn’t refer to updated technical specs, but to changes in the ways developers and end-users utilize the Web
The Web as a platform
Often incorporates folksonomies, REST or JSON-based APIs, AJAX/Flash/Flex-based apps, RSS feeds, mashups, blog publishing tools, wikis/forums, user-generated content

90. M
2004
Harvard Graphics Lab reunion at the ESRI User Conference

91. 2004
First TouchTable demonstrated at ESRI User Conference running ArcGlobe
Developed by Northrop Grumman, Applied Minds, and ESRI
Users interact with data on the table through a touch-sensitive interface
Focused on the ease of using a paper map, with the benefits of GIS

92. 2004
GIS used for first time in analyzing presidential election results on network TV on election night
CBS Evening News and ESRI staff
ArcGIS Desktop used to display current results
ArcGIS Engine generated hundreds of maps each hour on election night

93. E
2005
Mashup term first used in context of combining content from one website with another
Originally, the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another
Typically, the music and vocals belong to completely different genres
Influenced by Frank Zappa’s Xenochrony technique (extracted guitar solos) from the 70s
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) web development technique appears
used for creating interactive web applications

94. 2005 First Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco
Forum to discuss location-aware technologies, services, and mobile computing
Zillow.com online real estate services founded
80,000,000+ home values
Later teamed with Microsoft to offer Bird’s Eye View of the properties
Amazon provides access to their systems through Amazon Web Services on a utility computing basis
Key event in the development of cloud computing

95. 2006 Google Earth virtual globe program released
Originally developed by Keyhole (called Earth Viewer); purchased by Google in 2004
Uses digital elevation model (DEM) data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
Microsoft released Virtual Earth
Website and SDK
MSNs answer to Google Maps
Laser-Scan renamed 1Spatial

96. E
2006
Nick Chrisman publishes Charting the Unknown: How Computer Mapping at Harvard Became GIS
Harvard opens the Center for Geographic Analysis
ESRI releases ArcGIS 9.2
Significant Geodatabase and Server enhancements
First ESRI Developer’s Summit in Palm Springs

97. 2006 Wikimapia launched by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev
Collaborative mapping online resource that combines Google Maps with a wiki system
Allows users to add information, in the form of a note, to any location on Earth
Currently has over 8 million places marked and 120,000 registered users

98. 2007 3rd International Polar Year (IPY)
First occurred in 1882, second was in 1932
Motivated the IGY in 1957; focus of IPY:
Status: to determine the environmental status of the poles
Change: to understand historical change and improve future projections
Global linkages: understand the links and interactions between polar regions and the rest of the globe
New frontiers: push the frontiers of science at the poles
Vantage point: use the vantage point of the poles to enhance observatories from the interior of the Earth to the sun and stars
Human dimension: investigate the cultural, historical and social processes and identify their contributions to global cultural diversity

99. 2007 NAVTEQ purchased by Nokia TeleAtlas purchased by TomTom
Digital map data provider valued at $8.1B
Map coverage in 72 countries on 6 continents
TeleAtlas purchased by TomTom
Digital map data provider valued at $5.8B
Map coverage in over 200 countries
Apple introduces the iPhone
Internet connected multimedia smartphone with touch screen and minimal hardware interface
Functions include camera, media player, texting, visual voic , , web browsing, and Wi-Fi

100. E
ESRI
ESRI breaks ground on new headquarters building (Building Q) on New York St

101. E
2008
ACM SIGSPATIAL formed
ACM SIGSPATIAL addresses issues related to the acquisition, management, and processing of spatially-related information with a focus on algorithmic, geometric, and visual considerations. The scope includes, but is not limited to, geographic information systems (GIS)
GeoEye launches the GeoEye-1 imaging satellite that provides 41cm imagery
Highest resolution commercial satellite
Revisits any point on Earth every 3 days
$500M funding by NGA

102. 2008 First WhereCampPDX unconference held in Portland
100% volunteer-run unconference focusing on all things geographical
The sessions and schedule defined by participants at the conference rather than ahead of time

103. 2009 ESRI completed new headquarters building (Building Q)
ArcGIS Explorer 900 released
Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems (and MySQL) for $7.4B

104. 2010 First Redlands GIS Week ESRI releases ArcGIS 10
Annual event to bring together leaders from academia, government, and different industries to advance the science and application of geospatial technologies
Topic – Space Time Modeling and Analysis
ESRI releases ArcGIS 10

105. 2010
Raytheon awarded contract to modernize the GPS system (GPS III), replacing older satellites
New navigational signals
Stronger signals, more jamming resistance

106. ESRI Lifetime Achievement Awards
1996 Roger Tomlinson
1998 Carl Steinitz
1999 Waldo Tobler
2000 Phil Lewis
2001 Michael Goodchild
2002 Gilbert Grosvenor
2003 David Maidment
2004 David Rhind, Allan Schmidt
2005 David Cowen
2006 Larry Smarr
2007 Don Cooke
2009 Henk Scholten

107. 2008 User Conference Attendees
Over 14,750 people representing 124 countries

108. ESRI Staff Profile ~1900 employees in Redlands, almost 2700 worldwide
Represent 700 universities (200 outside the USA)
Most college graduates from:
Univ. of Redlands
Cal State, San Bernardino
UC Riverside
Cal Poly, Pomona
UCLA
San Diego State
COGS
SUNY Buffalo
Peking/Beijing University
Hollywood Upstairs Medical College
560 employees representing over 70 countries
US employees represent all 50 states
765 have worked at ESRI >10 years
88 have worked at ESRI >20 years
Citizenship Top 10
USA
India
Canada
China
Russia UK
Germany
Australia
9/10. New Zealand and Mexico

109. 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)