1.1. BRIEF HISTORY OF FITS

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Table 1.1.

Significant milestones in the development of FITS.

Date

Milestone

1979

Initial FITS Agreement and first interchange of files

1981

Published original (single HDU) definition [2]

1981

Published random groups definition [3]

1982

Formally endorsed by the IAU [1]

1988

Defined rules for multiple extensions [4]

1988

IAU FITS Working Group (IAUFWG) established

1988

Extended to include ASCII table extensions [5]

1988

Formal IAU approval of ASCII tables [6]

1990

Extended to include IEEE floating-point data [7]

1994

Extended to multiple IMAGE array extensions [8]

1995

Extended to binary table extensions [9]

1997

Adopted 4-digit year date format [10]

2002

Adopted conventions for celestial world coordinates [11, 12]

2004

Adopted MIME types for FITS data files [13]

2005

Extended to support variable-length arrays in binary tables

2005

Adopted conventions for spectral coordinate systems [14]

2005

Extended to include 64-bit integer data type

FITS Standard