In preparation for the (proposed) ADASS XIX BoF (Pence, White, Gaudet
& Seaman), "Astronomical Data Compression: Algorithms &
Architectures", I've been poking around in some peculiar corners of
image formats. One interesting case is OpenEXR from Industrial Light
& Magic:

http://www.openexr.com

This is a F/OSS format and software package that supports high dynamic
range computer imaging for the movie industry, principally through 16-
bit floats. Scanning down through their announcements we come to:

January 4, 2007 - OpenEXR wins an Academy Award for Technical
Achievement.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the
15 winners of Scientific and Technical Academy Awards. A Technical
Achievement Award goes to Florian Kainz for the design and
engineering of OpenEXR, a software package implementing 16-bit,
floating-point, high dynamic range image files. Widely adopted,
OpenEXR is engineered to meet the requirements of the visual effects
industry by providing for lossless and lossy compression of tiered
and tiled images.

This is like FITS, CFITSIO and tile compression winning an Oscar
(tm) :-)

Rob