Subject: IGOR - the roots
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References: <C6A1F126.886C%fblackburn@ppg.com>
<CCEF5E7AF6AA37448C5068EF31FBC8B4907BA0@exchangemb5.bnl.gov>
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Message-ID: <f899dcc41618b6a4583ad12a3c4207f8@xs4all.nl>

On Sun, 9 Aug 2009 21:54:55 -0700, "Pesendorfer, Marc"
<Marc_Pesendorfer at golder.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I will be teaching some courses in hydrogeology for the mining industry
> this fall and as an intense IGOR user I want to present the software as
> sort of a "State of the Art Data Analysis Tool" including practical
> examples with the audience. However, there are some questions, which
surely
> will be asked and which I have (currently) no answer for:
>
> 1) What does the name "IGOR" stand for?

Interactive Graphics Operations for Researchers. And yes, the name Igor is
older than the acronym. It used to refer to the stereotypical lab
assistant, Frankenstein style (with a load of other funny items, The change
history was IMHO the best one). Interestingly, in the original Mary Shelley
book, there is no Igor.

> 2) What is the history of IGOR? Who developed it, when (first official
> version) and for what purpose (spectrometry??) ?

Igor is old, starting in ca. 1988 on the Mac. I first used version 1.21a
in 1993, and it actually gave me my first job five years later, writing a
students manual for the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

It has changed significantly since those days.

Maarten