Subject: Incunabula!

From: dwells at fits.CV.NRAO.EDU (Don Wells)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1993 23:49:33 GMT

Today Eric Greisen and I made a wonderful discovery. I told Eric that I
had found a tape of early FITS files from April 1980, and I said (sadly)
that this was the oldest FITS tape known to me. He then looked in his rack
of 9-track tapes and found a reel of tape whose typed label says:

	"FITS Test Tape written at KPNO. unlabelled, 9-track,
	1600bpi. 7 files, 5 written by program WFITS and 2
	copied from Greisen's original test tape. Don Wells, 19Sep79"

This is the oldest FITS tape so far discovered. Also, the sixth file on it
is a copy of the first file on the first FITS tape, written in April 1979.

I have copied four of the files from the September 1979 tape and one file
from the April 1980 tape to directory /FITS/TestFiles/Incunabula on
anonymous-FTP server fits.cv.nrao.edu [192.33.115.8]. I append the README
from that directory.

I will be delighted to accept examples of early FITS files from other
observatories for installation in this directory.

 ----------------- /FITS/TestFiles/Incunabula/README ------------------

			      Incunabula
			    -=-=-=-=-=-=-

			      Don Wells
			    2-February-93

        Incunabula noun pl. [1] The beginnings or the
        earliest monuments of an art, race, or development;
        cradle; birthplace. [2] {incunabulum, sing.}
        Specifically, specimens of printing and
        block-engraving that appeared before A.D. 1500. 

The FITS files in directory /FITS/TestFiles/Incunabula were produced
early in the history of FITS, before the Basic_FITS paper was received
for publication by A&A Supplement Series on March 31, 1980. (The file
first-uv.fits has a DATE keyword only 12 days after this limit, and is
included because it is the oldest known example of the "Random Groups"
format.)  Additional sample files with early values of DATE,
preferably before March 31, 1980 but certainly before June 1981
(publication of Basic_FITS), will be gratefully accepted for inclusion
in the directory.

                     filename       bytes
                    -------------  -------
                    first-uv.fits    25920
                    first.fits     1056960
                    m87-32.fits     267840
                    mndrll-8.fits   792000
                    orion-16.fits   529920

		      -=-=-=- first.fits -=-=-=-

This was the first file on the first FITS interchange tape.  Eric
Greisen (NRAO) sent the tape to Don Wells (KPNO [now NOAO]). The tape
was produced by a PL/I program on an IBM_360 in April 1979 and was
read by a Fortran program on a CDC_6400 about a month later. That
first tape has since been lost, but the two files on it were copied by
Don Wells to another tape on September 19, 1979 and sent back to Eric
Greisen, who still possesses the copy tape. The tape has no parity
errors after 13.4 years. The data for this 5_GHz image of radio source
0810+665 were obtained while the VLA was still under construction.
Fewer than 27 antennas were available and the image was computed two
years before the invention of the self-calibration algorithm, so this
image is not representative of either the present VLA or the present
state of the art of synthesis imaging. The software used on the
IBM_360 was not AIPS, the design of which had only recently begun at
that time.

DATE-MAP= '16/10/78'                    / MAP CREATION DATE DD/MM/YY 
DATE    = '19/04/79'                    / MAP WRITING DATE DD/MM/YY 
ORIGIN  = 'NRAO(CV) PGM=DEC2FITS(V1)' 

File first.lst is a listing of the header of first.fits as produced by
program "listfits".

		    -=-=-=- first-uv.fits -=-=-=-

This file is believed to be the oldest surviving example of the Random
Groups format used by radio synthesis imaging systems for about a
decade. Recently it has become common to use the BINTABLE extension
format for fringe visibility data instead of random groups.

DATE-OBS= '05/01/80'                    / OBSERVATION START DATE DD/MM/YY 
DATE    = '12/04/80'                    / TAPE WRITING DATE: DD/MM/YY 
ORIGIN  = 'NRAO(CV) PGM=DUV2FITS(V1)'   / 

		    -=-=-=- mndrll-8.fits -=-=-=-

This is believed to be the oldest file with BITPIX=8. It was also the
first image file on the first FITS tape sent from KPNO to NRAO. 

ORIGIN  = 'KPNO    -- WFITS OF 09/13/79.' / 
DATE    = '13/09/79' '10.00.04' 'DCWGFAG'        /  DATE TIME JOBNAME 

		    -=-=-=- orion-16.fits -=-=-=-

This is believed to be the first file with BITPIX=16 produced by KPNO.

ORIGIN  = 'KPNO    -- WFITS OF 09/13/79.' / 
DATE    = '13/09/79' '10.02.56' 'DCWGFAG'        /  DATE TIME JOBNAME 

		     -=-=-=- m87-32.fits -=-=-=-

This is believed to be the oldest surviving file with BITPIX=32.

ORIGIN  = 'KPNO    -- WFITS OF 09/13/79.' / 
DATE    = '13/09/79' '10.03.51' 'DCWGFAG'        /  DATE TIME JOBNAME   

The times on the DATE cards of the three successive files are
an indication of the speed of the batch job on the CDC_6400.
--

Donald C. Wells             Associate Scientist        dwells at nrao.edu
National Radio Astronomy Observatory                   +1-804-296-0277
520 Edgemont Road                                 Fax= +1-804-296-0278
Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-2475 USA            78:31.1W, 38:02.2N