Exelis Visual Information Solutions
| Subsidiary of ITT Exelis | |
| Founded | 1977 |
| Headquarters | Boulder, Colorado, United States |
| Products |
IDL ENVI IAS (Image Access Solutions) |
| Website | www.exelisvis.com |
Exelis Visual Information Solutions (Exelis VIS), a wholly owned subsidiary of ITT Exelis, provides software for the analysis and visualization of scientific data and imagery. The company develops products such as IDL, ENVI and IAS which are used in a variety of industries, including remote sensing, engineering, geology, aerospace, defense and intelligence, and medical imaging.
When a group of scientists who developed the Mariner Mars space probes in 1977, David Stern, who was working at the University of Colorado developed a programming language called Mariner Mars Spectral Editor, which later evolved to IDL, Interactive Data Language, in order to supplement FORTRAN, specifically for data analysis and visualization at that time. As his vision developed, Stern left the university and started working in his attic to improve the programming language. He incorporated Research Systems Inc. (RSI) and released IDL as a proprietary programming language for visualizing data. NASA Goddard Space Center and Ball Aerospace were ones of the company's early customers.
In 1994, the software package, ENVI, was released. Written in IDL, ENVI enhanced the text-based IDL and enabled a suite of graphical user interfaces specialized in remote sensing imagery analysis. RSI was acquired by Eastman Kodak as a wholly owned subsidiary in 2000. Four years later, RSI along with the Remote Sensing Systems division of Eastman Kodak, were sold to ITT Corporation and were renamed ITT Visual Information Solutions.
In 2011, ITT Corporation was divided into three standalone companies, and ITT Visual Information Solutions became part of Exelis Inc. along with ITT Defense and Information Solutions. ITT Visual Information Solutions was renamed again to the current Exelis Visual Information Solutions.
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