1 .

History of GISThe Academic Era: 1965 to 1980

Erik HoelCraig GillgrassMatt McGrath

June 2010Version 19

2 .

Background

• Why?– Random conversation in Matt McGrath’s office

a couple years ago after reading Nick Chrisman’sbook (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!

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.”

5 .

6 .

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

7 .

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

8 .

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

C

Peter awarded the first (1991)Prix Vautrin Lud

9 .

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

10 .

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

C

Don received the 2007ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award

11 .

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

12 .

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

13 .

C

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:

1. Was the earth made for a reason? 2. Does the earth shape human life? 3. How have humans affected the earth?

– Recognized as one of the greatest books written by a geographer in the 20th century

14 .

C

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

15 .

C

16 .

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

C

17 .

1968

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

M

18 .

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

19 .

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

20 .

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

21 .

“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

M

22 .

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.”

M

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”

23 .

Alan received the 2003 Turing Award

M

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, email, and hypertext

24 .

Doug received the 1997 Turing Award

25 .

1969

• Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) was founded by Jack and Laura Dangermond

Jack won the 1998 Anderson Medal of Honor Association of American Geographers

M

Jack won the 2008 Carl Mannerfelt Medal ICA’s highest honor

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)

26 .

M

27 .

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

28 .

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

E

29 .

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

30 .

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

31 .

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

32 .

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

33 .

David awarded the 1995Prix Vautrin Lud

E

34 .

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

35 .

E

36 .

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

C

37 .

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

38 .

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

C

Torsten awarded the 1992 Prix Vautrin Lud

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)

39 .

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”

40 .

C

41 .

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)

42 .

C

43 .

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)

C

44 .

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)

C

“He was liked by some, disliked by many, and read by all.”- Publisher Mal Padgett

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

45 .

Allan received the 2004 ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award

C

1971

• First network email message sent by Ray Tomlinson at BBN in Cambridge, MA– Tomlinson authored the email program for TENEX (two parts –

SNDMSG and READMAIL)– The first email message he sent out of the lab was to the rest of

his group announcing the existence of network email and explaining how to use it

– Also introduce the use of the “@” sign – user@host– 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 email,

Tomlinson said it was “something like "QWERTYUIOP"”

46 .

"Mostly because it seemed like a neat idea." - Ray Tomlinson

C

47 .

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

48 .

C

49 .

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

50 .

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

E

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

51 .

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

52 .

"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

1. 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

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

53 .

E

54 .

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

55 .

E

56 .

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

Bob received the 2003 National Medal of Technology

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

57 .

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

58 .

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

59 .

E

1974

• First building on the ESRI New York Street campus arrives

60 .

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

61 .

M

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

62 .

M

63 .

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

64 .

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

65 .

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

66 .

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)

M

67 .

1974• 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 …

E“A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.”- Ted Nelson

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

68 .

The Mean Green Flashin’ Machine- Tek 4014

E

69 .

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

E

70 .

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)

E

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

71 .

E

72 .

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

73 .

E

74 .

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)

75 .

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

76 .

E

77 .

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

E

78 .

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

79 .

1977

• Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces the VAX 11/780 32-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)

E

Gordon received the 1991 National Medal of Technology

80 .

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

81 .

1978

• 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

C

Roger received the 2006 National Medal of Technology

82 .

1978

• First Harvard Computer Graphics Week– Attracted many influential pioneers of computer

mapping and GIS (often 300-500 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

83 .

1978

• The first SPAM email 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

84 .

C

85 .

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 1975-1979

– 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

86 .

C

87 .

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

C

88 .

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

89 .

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 1-2-3 and Excel followed

90 .

C

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

91 .

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 100,000 3380s, generating tens of billions of

dollars in revenue making the 3380 one of IBM’s most successful products of all time

92 .

E

93 .

• 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)

References – Personal Communications