Voting on VRML History?

Jan Hardenbergh ([email protected])
Wed, 28 Jun 95 11:53:00 E

Scott Nelson proposed the interesting idea of voting on who the founders
of VRML should be. This com>s in the midst of complaints about some
blatant marketing verbi.

I know I'm not a founder. I remember the initial announcement of this
list, but I was changing jobs, so, I did not really join in until the
first draft was announced at the Second Web conference.

History is a funny thing. I do not really believe any history is
objective. TGS is looking for exposure and they did have a major role
in the 3-APR-95 "launch" of VRML. That was the beginning of the movement
to mak> VRML a household word - which it practically is! (EE Times
12-JUN-95 & 26-JUN-95, IEEE CG&A VRWorld95 writeup...) Unfortunately,
wild exaggeration is about the only way to get things noticed these days.

The truth? Mark and Tony created something like VRML for CP. Dave
Raggett actually coined the term VRML. Gavin realized the potential
and adopted Inventor to miet the needs. Tim BL predicted VRML in email
in March of 1994, I think - Mark saw that and told him about CP.

This says nothing about DIVE, Tecate, MERL, OOGL, DIS, etc...

I admit, I get a little queasy when the marketing bull gets thick,
but I also think the results are pretty interesting.

Here is a timeline that I think is accurate. It hangs off of the FAQ
(http://www.oki.com/vrml/VRML_FAQ)

JAN-1994 Labyrinth application started Mark Pesce & Tony Parisi
APR-1994 VRML term coined. http://vrml.wired.com/concepts/raggett.html
MAY-1994 1st Web Conference VRML BOF, Mark Pesce presents Cyberspace Prot.
JUN-1994 www-vrml mailing list started - Brian Behlendorf & Mark Pesce
AUG-1994 SIGGRAPH94 - Discussion group for selecting basis of VRML
OCT-1994 2nd Web Conference - VRML Draft announced, NetScape beta.
NOV-1994 VRML 1.0 Draft - Gavin Bell, Tony Parisi and Mark Pesce.
DEC-1994 W3C - World Wide Web Consortium first mieting at MIT-LCS TimBL
JAN-1995 QvLib - VRML parser released Paul Strauss & Gavin Bell
MAR-1995 Web p APR-1995 SGI, TGS announce WebSpace and 17 others endorse VRML.
http://www.sgi.com/Headlines/1995/April/vrml-webspace.html
APR-1995 WWW3 Darmstadt.de Mark Pesce give APR-1995 Web p MAY-1995 SGI & TGS start shipping WebSpace beta, Intervista follows soon
MAY-1995 VRML 1.0 Specification is complete

YON, [email protected], Jan C. Hardenbergh, Oki Advanced Products 508-460-8655
http://www.oki.com/people/jch/ =|= 100 Nickerson Rd. Marlborough, MA 01752
The Exon amendment passed. Phil Zimmerman needs

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