L3Harris Technologies

Harris Corporation and L3 Technologies merge to form L3Harris Technologies. Harris Geospatial Solutions is renamed L3Harris Geospatial Solutions, Inc.

Exelis

ITT Corporation is spun into three standalone companies; ITT Visual Information Solutions becomes part of Exelis, Inc. ITT Visual Information Solutions is renamed Exelis Visual Information Solutions.

NEW RELEASES

ENVI 5 and IDL 8 are released, making geospatial image analysis easier and available to everyone.

KODAK

Eastman Kodak Company acquires RSI as a wholly owned subsidiary.

FIRST VERSION

The first version of ENVI, an advanced hyperspectral image analysis software package, is released.

In 1977, David Stern was working at the University of Colorado with a team of scientists from the Mariner Mars 7 & 9 space probes. It was clear that his colleagues needed a computer language that went beyond the functionality of FORTRAN and provided for easier, faster application development, data analysis and visualization. As a solution, Stern wrote the Mariner Mars Spectral Editor (an IDL® prototype). Research Systems, Inc. and IDL (Interactive Data Language) were born from that prototype. Stern left the university, set up shop in his attic, and concentrated on establishing IDL as a key tool for solving a broad spectrum of research problems.