The GIS history in Fort Collins is longer, deeper, and more important than many in our industry may realize.
The history of GIS in Ft. Collins goes back to at least 1976. In 1976, the US Fish and Wildlife Service created the Western Energy and Land Use Team. The work of WELUT in many ways was directed and funded by the EPA requirements for the Coal Program. One of the mandates for this group was to use GIS technology as a tool/application to inventory habitat, map habitat, perform habitat mitigation, and other wildlife related applications related to planned strip mining in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, and Colorado.
Now, at that time, the first step in the process was to do a GIS study and determine which software - if any - could be used for the habitat applications. If no software existed, there was the mandate to develop software. The contract to do the GIS activities was awarded to the Federation of Rocky Mountain States. In January of 1977, I was hired by FRMS at the request of WELUT. FRMS also hired Jim Gropper and John Hammil (both live out of state now). Along with a couple of others, we captured requirements for GIS functionality. We also did an inventory and evaluation of all of the GIS software available back in 1977. More than one would think. These study documents are still available.
Anyway, we determined that no software system could do what was needed. So, I was tasked with developing a new GIS for use by the Fish and Wildlife Service. The requirements analysis was the key design document. In 1978, I completed the first version of MOSS - the Map Overlay and Statistical System.
In the meantime, WELUT had plans for ramping up more staff for photo interpretation, implementing a mini-computer based hardware capability for GIS and so forth. Denny Parker was put in charge of this effort. Denny later founded GIS World. Through 1979 and 1980, WELUT implemented their plans and hired a number of software engineers, remote sensing specialists, and so forth.
As WELUT's activities and mandate increased, they expanded to include a remote sensing lab, some photo interpretation, and GIS support services. I am not sure of the exact date, but I believe they let an RFP in the 1979 timeframe. This RFP was for support services for the above mentioned WELUT activities. It was through this contractual vehicle, which was re-competed every few years, that CSU became involved at WELUT. These support contracts were also how a number of individuals, such as Dave Linden, John Lee, Randy Frosh, Eric Strand, Jim Kramer, and many others became involved in GIS activities in Northern Colorado. Over a ten year period, this contract passed from a private company (HDR) to CSU and Autometric to TGS. FYI, John Lee still lives in Colorado and last I heard is working for Vexcel. Dave Linden is working still in the GIS field and is located in the upper mid west. Randy Frosh is still in town and works for the Dept of Agriculture.
Anyway, in 1980 I left the Fish And Wildlife and started an office in Ft. Collins for a company called Autometric (now part of Boeing). At that time, Autometric was primarily a defense contractor but also had a contract with the USFWS Wetland group down in St Petersburg, Florida. They developed a
software system called WAMS - Wetlands Analytical Mapping System. WAMS was the worlds first interactive digitizing system that allowed the operator to either digitize from a standard digitizing table or using an analytical stereo plotter. WAMS also used a fully rigorous topological data structure and constructed the topology as the operator digitized the map or photograph. Pretty advanced stuff for 1977 when that contract started. In 1979, the FWS decided that WAMS needed to be converted from an HP 3000 mini to the Data General AOS environment and made to work in concert with MOSS. This is how I got involved with the folks at Autometric.
After joining Autometric, I worked with Jim Smith and others at CSU to compete for the support services contract. We were awarded that contract in the 1981 timeframe. This contract allowed me to expand the Autometric office in Ft. Collins and hire great GIS people such as Randy Frosh, Jim Kramer, Robert Starling (now in Australia), John Davidson (now in Virginia and working sensor networks and spatial semantics), and so forth. Autometric built a staff of about 10 people, most of whom are still in Ft. Collins. The primary function of the Ft. Collins Autometric staff was to provide software support for MOSS and WAMS, develop a new system called MAPS (raster modeling) that was based on Joe Berry's and Dana Tomlin's Map Algebra, and COS (Cartographic output). We also provided installation and training services for all that software and helped the BLM, Forest Service, Park Service, and other organizations get GIS operational. This again all in the early 1980's.
In 1984, Autometric staff were heavily involved in a several projects that really provided the research and design background for a future product (DeltaMap). One project was funded by the USGS and was called the MOSS Topological Study. The focus of this study was how to evolve MOSS to use a full topological data structure the way WAMS did. Another activity was called TAWS (Terrain Analysis Work Station). This was a US Army funded study coordinated by the Engineering Topo Lab in Fort Belvoir. In that contract, we ported MOSS and WAMS from the DG AOS operating system to this new operating system called UNIX. The target hardware was an HP 500 series minicomputer - built here in Ft. Collins. The last contract was for proposal preparation for something called Mark 90. Mark 90 was a huge DMA procurement. We did studies on such things as attribute consistency testing (now called ontology), real time product generation, super high speed query algorithms for massive (back then) spatial databases, and lots of other really interesting technical stuff. We finished all of these activities in 1985.
Armed with this research and the implementation knowledge gained from MOSS and WAMS, a group of us decided that we should develop a new commercial product. Beginning in late 1985 we embarked on a major design initiative, including database architecture, search algorithms, user interface, functional capabilities, and so on. After about 5 or 6 months of design, we entered an intensive programming development phase for the new commercial GIS product. After six months and 50,000 lines of new code, we deployed a beta version of DeltaMap. This version of software ran on a HP 200 Bobcat UNIX box. As far as we know, this was the first ever commercial GIS product available for UNIX. I still have all of the original design documents for DeltaMap.
The Beta activity for DeltaMap was actually done in Australia. At the same time, Autometric spun the Delta group off into a wholly owned subsidiary called DeltaSystems. In 1986, there were 5 Delta employees. Autometric also continued to maintain an office in Ft. Collins and continued working with the MOSS/AMS community.