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The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/19981203013048/http://web.syr.edu:80/%7Etrscavo/latex/latex-history.html
This page contains historical tidbits of interest to TeX, LaTeX, and
AMS-LaTeX users.
LaTeX is a large set of macros built on top of TeX, a digital
typesetting language created by
Donald Knuth at
Stanford in the 1970s. The original LaTeX, now called LaTeX 2.09, was
created by
Leslie Lamport
at Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1980s. A more
recent version, called LaTeX 2e, is an outgrowth of
the LaTeX3 project led by Frank Mittelbach.
AMS-LaTeX, a set of
LaTeX enhancements by the American
Mathematical Society, provides enhanced mathematical typesetting
capabilities, three new LaTeX 2e document classes, scores of new math
symbols, and four new math alphabets. Articles written with AMS-LaTeX
are of the same high quality as those found in the journals of the
AMS.
Milestone events
[1436]
Gutenberg invents the printing press.
[1460]
The calligrapher Feliciano puts the
principles of calligraphy on a sound mathematical footing.
[1509]
The Italian mathematician Pacioli, the author
of one of the first algebra books ever published, writes an
appendix on alphabets in his De Divina Proportione.
[1690]
Louis XIV of France commissions the
creation of a Royal Alphabet.
[1972]
Lamport graduates from Brandeis and moves to SRI,
where later he writes the LaTeX macros.
[1974]
Knuth stops submitting papers to the AMS because
"the finished product was just too painful for me to look at".
[1977]
Knuth begins his research on typography.
[1978]
Knuth delivers an AMS Gibbs Lecture entitled
Mathematical Typography [Bull. AMS, vol. 1 (March 1979),
no. 2, pp. 337--372] to the AMS membership at its annual meeting.
[1979]
Digital Equipment Corporation and the American
Mathematical Society jointly publish Knuth's book TeX and METAFONT:
New Directions in Typesetting, which contains the text of Knuth's
Gibbs Lecture.
[1980, October]
The first draft of Spivak's Joy of
TeX is announced in TUGboat, vol. 1, no. 1.
[1982, January 11]
Spivak announces AMS-TeX at the
joint math meetings.
[1982, January]
Version 0 of Spivak's Joy of
TeX is released.
[1982, September]
Knuth releases dvitype, a model DVI
driver.
[1983, December]
Lamport writes a LaTeX manual, the
earliest known LaTeX manual in existence.
[1984]
Addison-Wesley publishes Knuth's The TeXbook,
destined to become the definitive TeX reference.
[1984, September]
Lamport releases version 2.06a of
the LaTeX macros.
[1985]
The Computer Modern (CM) fonts replace the
American Modern (AM) fonts in TeX.
[1985]
Patashnik releases BibTeX version 0.98
for LaTeX 2.08. [See his article "BibTeX 1.0", TUGboat, vol. 15,
no. 3, pp. 269--274, September 1994.]
[1985, August]
Lamport releases LaTeX 2.09, his last
version of the LaTeX macros. (Incidentally, version 2.09 was to be
called "version 3.0", but Addison-Wesley ignored Lamport's
instructions not to publish the note that mentions 2.09, and instead
put it on the copyright page. So Lamport's last version of LaTeX
became known as version 2.09 for posterity.)
[1985]
Addison-Wesley publishes the first edition of
Lamport's reference manual LaTeX: A Document Preparation
System.
[1986, March 26]
Rokicki prints his first page with
dvisw, an early DVI printer driver for the Amiga, on a QMS
SmartWriter.
[1986, September]
Rokicki prints his first page with
dvips, a DVI to PostScript translator derived from dvisw in the
summer of 1986.
[1987]
Three Austrians, Partl, Schlegl, and Hyna,
release a short introduction to LaTeX (written in German) into the
public domain, contributing to the popularity of LaTeX in Europe.
[1988]
Rokicki releases dvidvi, a DVI-to-DVI filter.
[1988]
Chen and Harrison publish an article describing
the program MakeIndex entitled "Index preparation and processing"
[Software---Practice and Experience, vol. 19 (1988), no. 9, pp.
897--915].
[1988]
Blue Sky Research (BSR) releases PostScript
Type 3 versions of the Computer Modern (CM) fonts.
[1989, August 21]
At a TUG meeting at Stanford,
Lamport agrees to turn over maintenance and development of LaTeX
to Mittelbach who, along with Rowley and Schöpf, form the
LaTeX3 team.
[1989]
Mittelbach and Schöpf release the New Font
Selection Scheme (NFSS).
[1990]
The TUG conference at Cork (Ireland) agrees on a
256-character font layout for TeX. An initial implementation was
released later that year by Schwarz.
[1990]
The American Mathematical Society releases
AMS-LaTeX 1.1, a port of Spivak's AMS-TeX to LaTeX 2.09. The
conversion, which took two years, was done by Mittelbach and
Schöpf, with help by Downes.
[1990]
Y&Y; converts the PostScript Type 3 CM fonts
created by BSR in 1988 to "hinted" Type 1 format.
[1991]
BSR and Y&Y; collaborate on Type 1 versions of
LaTeX and SliTeX fonts to accompany the Type 1 CM fonts created in
1990. In the following year, they create Type 1 versions of the AMS
fonts as well.
[1993]
Malyshev releases the Paradissa fonts, which are
PostScript type 1 versions of the CM fonts.
[1994, June]
The LaTeX3 team introduces LaTeX 2e.
[1994]
Addison-Wesley publishes
The LaTeX Companion by Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin.
[1994]
Addison-Wesley publishes Lamport's second edition
of LaTeX: A Document Preparation System.
[1994, September]
Malyshev releases version 1.0 of the
BaKoMa fonts, PostScript type 1 versions of the CM fonts. Version
1.1 of BaKoMa, released in November of the same year, includes 88 CM
typefaces (60 text fonts, 27 math fonts, and 1 big font) and 52 AMS
typefaces.
[1995, February]
The American Mathematical Society releases
AMS-LaTeX 1.2, a port of version 1.1 to LaTeX 2e by Downes and Jones.
[1995]
Birkhäuser publishes Grätzer's
Math into LaTeX: An Introduction to LaTeX and AMS-LaTeX.
[1997]
Knappen releases the EC fonts, a version of the
CM fonts using the T1 encoding.
[1997]
BSR releases its PostScript Type 1 versions of
the CM fonts into the public domain.
Other events
If you have information about any of the following, or anything else of
interest, please mail me.
[???]
Knuth uses troff to write a paper.
[???]
Knuth releases the first public version of the
TeX macros.
[???]
The first DVI viewer for platform ?? is released
by ??.
