...

First half hour: Intro Mickey Mantle - NASA Houston letters Steve - wrote software to display 400 stars for Johnson space flight center Brent - had been working at planetarium Steve and Brent saw it as celestial navigation training Brent and Steve had idea to do it for planetaria Summer 1977 - digitized 400 stars Fall 1978 - market survey Jan. 1979 - big project approval meeting Summer 1978 - approval to go ahead with lens design $25,000, 5.25 inch lens (no money for prototype or projector) April 1979 - Survey followup June 1978 - told to can the project late summer 1978 - cobbled together a PDP11 and Picture System as a prototype; took to Hansen planetarium Second half hour: Jan. 1980: Budget request memo Did it on a shoe-string budget Spring 1979: Pacific Planetarium Association meeting in Tucson After that sent someone to most planetarium conferences At Cocoa Beach conference, Jack Spore of Spitz gave encouragement at second meeting. Also met Charlie Smith of Richmond Universe at this meeting. On flight home from that meeting designed the pyramid design of projector Wayne Sumner designed case Feb. 12, 1979 - KCET contacted them for Cosmos. Want to fly around Big Dipper. Jim Blinn had told them. Thought they could look at Big Dipper from the back and it would be a mirror image. Yale Bright Star catalogue was out of date and KCET had newer data, so some stuff looked wrong. Lens inscription: "August 1979 mfg. by Lincoln Optical Corp., L.A., CA for Evans and Sutherland Computer Corp., SLC, UT, Digital planetarium CRT projection lens, 43mm, f2.8, 160 degree field of view" March 6, 1979: Lens design review: March 1979 August 1979: First demo with full projection system: Projector from Xytron Corp.. Got a call from St. Louis planetarium dir. wanting to get a demo at planetarium conference meeting in Salt Lake in 10 days. Lens showed up 3 hours before the demo. Dir. of planetarium conf. (from St. Louis) "Isn't it great to be here in Salt Lake where planetarium history is being made?" Hansen is 50 foot dome, 80% reflectivity. Some are 76 foor, 36% reflectivity. Showed Arches, Corona, flights through stars. Prob. not planetary movement. Fall 1979: Demo to PPA at Morrison planetarium. Set up another demo for Feb. 1980: Demo in St. Paul: Didn't even use spot photometer because it was clearly too dim (on big dome, low reflectivity). But people were just wowed and Virginia signed anyway. $595,000. After that Digistar was an official project, but not with the full blessings of the company. Never been adequately funded. Got a budget for just under $12,000 because of this. Req. for M.E. Feb. 4, 1980. Got Wayne Sumner. June 17, 1980: Jeri joined the same day as Wayne Sumner. Gayle Nielsen was with them. Third half hour: Traded half-time secretary req for Gayle Nielsen. Dad: "The past tense of fun is funded." Had lens and projector. Everything depended on them but they couldn't improve them. Steve's budget came from marketing until late 1980, when he moved to Don Garner. Fall 1980: Don Garner asked him to write everything down. Car crash. Case of Snicker's bars from Theater Candy Company. Gayle began working on correction circuitry. This was a milestone for payment from Virginia. Shape of curve was scalloped before correction because of diode function generator. Switched to analog: atan(r)/r. Noise problem in center of screen due to sqrt of tiny numbers. Project went from Don Garner to Gary Watkins to Rod Rougelot to Steve Black to Jeri Panek. Morale problems and exhaustion. Other people who came on: Early 1981: Chuck Bowring control console. Console was milestone 2. He started work on it in Jan. 1981. Mentions "Boldy Go" on the console at 1:09:51. They are referring to photos of the console in their possession. If anyone has any photos of the console please let me know.