Behind The Scenes 
       Since March of 1991, when v1.0 of the digiMatic  DA was introduced, I've received hundreds of calls from friendly people who wanted to know about digiMatic , about FEB Software, and especially about Dr. Pookie.  So, I thought it might save some time if I included the whole story in the manual — but you can still call and be friendly if you like.
      My name is Dr. Gary S. Huvard.  I'm a Chemical Engineer and Chemist by training and by disposition and I consult with the chemists and engineers at large chemical companies for a living.  In doing so, I spend a fair amount of my time looking at graphs, spectra, chromatograms and other such data that is mailed or faxed to me.  Very often I've had need for the numerical values underlying these charts.  So, I've spent a reasonable portion of my adult life trying to use a ruler and magnifying glass to recover numbers from charts.
      I was doing this one afternoon in late 1990 when I angrily wondered why my Mac couldn't do the job — it was a whiz at taking numbers and making graphs — why couldn't it go backwards?  Clearly, the calculation wasn't difficult as I'd spent the better part of a day doing just that with my ruler.  Armed with this radical new thought, I set about trying to find someone who could help me make my Mac do what I wanted.  I had long since given up the idea of becoming a Mac programmer — I was an engineer and would stick with my trusty Fortran compiler to do my number crunching, thank you.
      This job required some real toolbox expertise.  Enter Dan Jacoby, a Mac programmer of some repute who just happened to have recently moved to Richmond and was looking for some interesting programming work (never mind how we met - we did, so let's go on with the story).  I explained to him my concept for recovering data from pictures.  We decided to give it a go — I would supply the conversion algorithms and he would incorporate them into an interface.  We would market the program and become rich beyond our wildest dreams.  Donald Trump's millions would look like chump change - we were talking Microsoft™ here!
      During the next three months, Dan and I (well, mostly Dan) put together what would eventually be digiMatic  v1.0, a DA which did a wonderful job of recovering data from charts in a fraction of the time it usually took.  Dr. Richard Korsmeyer, a colleague of mine who works for Pfizer Research in Connecticut, saw an early version of the DA and suggested working out a way to correct for rotation in scanned images.  I worked out the algorithm to do this and Dan incorporated the "un-rotate" feature into what would eventually become digiMatic  v1.0.2.
      It was also during this time that my older brother Anthony, a Master Luthier by training and a curmudgeon by disposition, dubbed the new software "Famous Engineer Brand" - the name stuck.  digiMatic  (as a name) started out as a joke — Dan and I had been discussing marketing our fledgling product the way Ginsu knives are hawked on late night TV.  "It slices, it dices, it creates beautiful Julienne fries.  But wait!  That's not all!! You also get ..."  You get the picture.  The name digiMatic  stuck also.
      The logos and artwork for digiMatic  were created by my youngest brother Todd with help from Kathy Hart, a graphic artist in Raleigh, NC.  Kathy and her husband, Inaki Zubizarretã, own and run a graphic arts company, Zubigraphics, there.  Todd, who publishes the Southern Aviator™ from offices in Clayton, N.C., is a photography wizard, accomplished pilot, and expert Mac desktop publisher.  After I had already proofed the FEB logos, it was Todd who sneaked the Dr. Pookie banner into one of them just before everything went to the printer.  Pookie is a nickname my late father gave me as a child - it was updated to the current version after I completed my doctorate some years ago.
      Dan finished the DA in early March of 1991.  One month and several thousands of dollars in production costs later, digiMatic  hit MacWeek!  The big time!!  On The Cover Of The Rolling Stone™!!!  Since then sales have been reasonable.  We're certainly not getting wealthy, but we did have some fun publishing digiMatic .  I'm still a Chemical Engineer and I'm still running a consulting practice.  Dan moved on to start MacXperts, a Macintosh multimedia firm in Richmond that's doing quite well.  And, one of Dan's protegés, Jamie Lay, has become the new digiMatic  development guru.
      Version 2.0 of digiMatic  began to take shape in late 1991 when I asked Jamie to incorporate the area calculations into the Editor for me.  I wrote the area calculations in Fortran.  It took nearly a month to figure out how to get the C compiler he was using to successfully call my Fortran algorithm.  We'd like to thank Claudia Vaughn from Language Systems for her help with extracting the libraries needed to make this work.  In all, it took Jamie and I (well, mostly Jamie) nearly six months to incorporate the changes and additions into digiMatic  v2.0.
      Jamie and I have plans for lots of other projects.  Keep a lookout for more great products from Famous Engineer Brand Software in the near future.  We do hope you enjoy using digiMatic  as much as we enjoy bringing digiMatic  to you!  Are we having fun or what?!  

                                                              Gary S. Huvard
                                                  President, FEB Software

       digiMatic  is an indispensable tool for all chemists, engineers, physicists, statisticians, programmers, artists, cartographers, and others.   In fact, anyone that works with numerical data on a Mac will want        digiMatic .  Order yours today.  Retail price $249.00 from FEB Software, 4855 Finlay Street, Richmond, Virginia  23231.  Phone (804) 222-2215.  VISA, Mastercard, and company purchase orders welcome.