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[fitsbits] Happy Birthday, FITS!
Dear Friends-of-FITS,
I have always considered March 28th to be the birthday of FITS, because the original Basic FITS Agreement was finalized on 1979-03-28 ('28/03/79' old-style). So today is the 25th birthday of the FITS Agreement. Those of you who are not familiar with the history of how the Agreement was reached, and how it came to be the standard for astronomical data, can consult two different versions of that history: 1) Eric's FITS history Eric Greisen, the other negotiator for the Agreement, has produced an excellent review of the origin, role and nature of the FITS Agreements during the past 25 years. It was published two years ago as a chapter in an astronomical history book edited by Andre Heck. A link to the document is available on Eric's web page, at http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~egreisen 2) Don's FITS history In 1992 I posted a description of early FITS documents which were, and still are, in my files. This document will tell you about the 'pre-history' of FITS, including such details as the reasoning behind the 2880-byte record size, the original proposal for keyword length, and an interesting coincidence of notable historical events that happened 25 years ago today. See http://www.cv.nrao.edu/fits/document...s/history.news or http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/birthday.news Best regards, Don Wells -- Donald C. Wells Scientist http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells National Radio Astronomy Observatory +1-434-296-0277 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-2475 USA |
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