Peter Žalman: Learning from the past

I am always interested in stories about how certain software changed in time. Sometimes it is edifying to see for how long certain product is around, sometimes it is amazing how the software can make it in such a short period of time.

I enjoyed couple of software story books, like The Graphisoft Story , Inside Steve’s Brain or Planet Google.

Those are personal stories, so I am always happy when I find some blog post or article dedicated directly to software. I still enjoy reading books, but… book about graphic or 3D software…Usually I miss pictures or screenshots, that can immediately paint the picture without long descriptions.

Did you know that Photoshop is around for more Than 20 years now ?

I am not regular Photoshop user, but its impact is impressive. In same way as you are googling information, when speaking about photo, you are never sure if it is shopped or not.

3D Studio first released to public in 1990.

I can remember playing in first MS DOS versions of 3D Studio. I don’t feel that old, but it was literally couple of years ago. Just the story, how I even got 3DS on my fathers 386 is part of that experience. Friend of friends friend gave that set of floppy disks to.. I just can’t continue, I am not sure how current anti-piracy laws can track me in time ;) At that time I did not even realize that I am missing some features considered as standard now - such as undo.

I am using powerpoint regularly to do internal presentations, customer trainings and demos. This typical Microsoft application was originally developed for Mac computers. You can read the whole story on Robert Gaskins webpage, including very first powerpoint presentation.

Cadhistory is another great site, where you can download very interesting and comprehensive The Engineering Revolution book for free,which cover also Analysis companies.

I don’t have ambition to track history of Scia Engineer predecessors right now.

But just for fun, here are couple of pictures I found interesting.