Box 2

Scope and Contents

Color prints from NCAR Graphics used in scientific projects dating to 1990. These beautiful plots represent the best that could be produced at the time and illustrate their value to researchers. These prints come from the "NCAR Graphics Guide to New Utilities: Version 3.00" ( NCR Technical Note TN-341).

Scope and Contents

Staffing data (FTEs) from 1974 to 1995.

Scope and Contents

Version 1.0 was the first cohesive package release. Prior to Version 1.0 there was no formal distribution policy and requests were handled on an ad hoc basis. This folder contains a list of Version 1.0 contents, with plots, dating to May, 1987. Also contained in this folder is an announcement of (what to become) Version 1.0, dated August 1, 1986. This version was the first to be assigned a version number and was the fist time charging for the software and manuals was begun.

Scope and Contents In 1979 there was an effort to analyze how much computing resources were being expended on graphics output. This information was desirable in and of itself, but was also of value in planning exercises. One day the entire graphics film output from the dd80 cameras (the only available hardcopy output at the time) was duplicated. This output consisted of some 30,000 images and Tom Wright (an early NCAR Graphics developer) and Lofton Henderson went through this by hand and picked out what...

Scope and Contents Autograph is a package of functions for creating XY-plots. It was one of the first graphics functions ever written for scientific support, this was in the 1960s. The first version of this package was called IDIOT and was written by Dave Robertson. Later Dan Anderson took the package over and renamed it with the more meaningful name AUTOGRAPH. Many versions of the Anderson code came into existence by way of users modifying it to meet various needs. In the mid 1970s Dave Kennison started...

Scope and Contents In the 1980s there was an effort to move to base NCAR Graphics on national (ANSI) and international (ISO) graphics standards. One of these was the CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) Standard. This standardized the encoding of graphics functionality in a device-independent file. In order to display such a file, various device-specific translators had to be written. The production of such translators was reduced to filling in master tables called graphcaps and fontcaps. The document in this...

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The decision was made in April, 1963 for the Computing Facility to purchase its own computer. Prior to that time users had been using computers at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) and the University of Colorado. This first computer purchased was the CDC 3600 which set us on a path to the CDC 6600 and 7600 and later that CRAYs.