A WORD ABOUT THE AUTHORS


Fractint is the result of a synergy between the main authors, many contributors, and published sources. All four of the main authors have had a hand in many aspects of the code. However, each author has certain areas of greater contribution and creativity. Since there is not room in the credits screen for the contributions of the main authors, we list these here to facilitate those who would like to communicate with us on particular subjects.

Main Authors of Version 19.

BERT TYLER

is the original author of Fractint. He wrote the "blindingly fast" 386-specific 32 bit integer math code and the original video mode logic. Bert made Stone Soup possible, and provides a sense of direction when we need it. His forte is writing fast 80x86 assembler, his knowledge of a variety of video hardware, and his skill at hacking up the code we send him!

Bert has a BA in mathematics from Cornell University. He has been in programming since he got a job at the computer center in his sophomore year at college - in other words, he hasn't done an honest day's work in his life. He has been known to pass himself off as a PC expert, a UNIX expert, a statistician, and even a financial modeling expert. He is currently masquerading as an independent PC consultant, supporting the PC-to-Mainframe communications environment at NIH. If you sent mail from the Internet to an NIH staffer on his 3+Mail system, it was probably Bert's code that mangled it during the Internet-to-3+Mail conversion. He also claims to support the MS-Kermit environment at NIH. Fractint is Bert's first effort at building a graphics program.

TIM WEGNER

contributed the original implementation of palette animation, and is responsible for most of the 3D mechanisms. He provided the main outlines of the "StandardFractal" engine and data structures, and is accused by his cohorts of being "obsessed with options". One of Tim's main interests is the use of four dimensional algebras to produce fractals. Tim served as team coordinator for version 19, and integrated Wes Loewer's arbitrary precision library into Fractint.

Tim has BA and MA degrees in mathematics from Carleton College and the University of California Berkeley. He worked for 7 years overseas as a volunteer, doing things like working with Egyptian villagers building water systems. Since returning to the US in 1982, he has written shuttle navigation software, a software support environment prototype, and supported strategic information planning, all at NASA's Johnson Space Center. After a two-year stint at full-time writing, he's back at NASA developing shuttle navigation software.

JONATHAN OSUCH

started throwing pebbles into the soup around version 15.0 with a method for simulating an if-then-else structure using the formula parser. He has contributed the fn||fn fractal types, the built- in bailout tests, the increase in both the maximum iteration count and bailout value, and bug fixes too numerous to count. Jonathan worked closely with Robin Bussell to implement Robin's browser mechanism in Fractint.

Jonathan has a B.S. in Physics from the University of Dubuque and a B.S. in Computer Science from Mount Mercy College, both in Iowa. He is currently working as a consultant in the nuclear power industry.

WES LOEWER

first got his foot in the Stone Soup door by writing fast floating point assembler routines for Mandelbrot, Julia, and Lyapunov fractals. He also rewrote the boundary trace algorithms and added the frothybasin fractal. His most significant contribution is the addition of the arbitrary precision library which allows Fractint to perform incredibly deep zooms.

Wes has a B.S. in Physics from Wheaton College in Illinois. He also holds an M.S. in Physics and an M.Ed. in Education from Texas A&M University. Wes teaches physics and math at McCullough High School in The Woodlands, Texas where his pupils inspire him to keep that sense of amazement that students get when they understand a physical or mathematical principle for the first time. Since he uses Fractint to help teach certain mathematical principles, he's one of the few folks who actually gets to use Fractint on the job. Besides his involvement with Fractint, Wes is the author of WL-Plot, an equation graphing program, and MatCalc, a matrix calculator program.


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Noel Giffin, TRIUMF
noel@triumf.ca