Re: Farewell, Glenn Rander-Pehrson

Cosmin Truta wrote:

> Willem van Schaik wrote:
> > Cosmin mentioned how Glenn created the very first PNG images. However
> > that link at RPI doesn't work anymore.
> >
> >    http://www.rpi.edu/~randeg/paleo_pngs.html
>
> Indeed, it doesn't. Glenn's RPI account got closed many years ago.
>
> > Anybody who has a backup of those "paleo" images? In his honour we
> > should bring them to live again on the libpng.org site.
>
> It would have been nice to have these in a virtual "PNG Museum". But
> we don't, unfortunately, unless someone comes forward with a really
> lucky back-up copy.
>
> I asked Glenn, in one of our more recent conversations, about these
> (and other) ancient images, because I wanted to archive them. He told
> me that he had lost all of his files in that account, and that was it.

https://web.archive.org/web/19990116221327/http://www.rpi.edu/~randeg/paleo_pngs.html

at least lists the filenames:

-----------------------------------
Paleo PNGs

These are some of the first PNG images to be posted to the Web. They were created in March 1995 according to the 9th Draft of the PNG spec, and are still valid today because of the efforts by the PNG development group to maintain backward compatibility.

March 7, 1995, noninterlaced images by Glenn Randers-Pehrson, ARL: (These images do not contain a gAMA chunk; file gammas are actually 0.45. All were converted from GIF)
 - arl_logo.png This is the image that Oliver Fromme first displayed with QPEG, on March 11, 1995. While it is a valid PNG file, unfortunately the palette is out of order; blue and yellow are swapped.
 - arl_logo_a0_sub.png - inline arl_logo_a0.png.html (first transparent image, PLTE corrected on March 19)
 - rpfamily.png - inline rpfamily.png.html
 - www_logo.png - inline www_logo.png.html
 - opossum.png - inline opossum.png.html (an opossum named "Png")

March 22, 1995, first interlaced images, by Glenn Randers-Pehrson, ARL:
 - arl_logo_a7.png - inline arl_logo_a7.png.html
 - rpfamily_a7.png - inline rpfamily_a7.png.html
 - www_logo_a7.png - inline www_logo_a7.png.html
 - opossum_a7.png - inline opossum_a7.png.html
(these images do not contain a gAMA chunk; file gammas are actually 0.45)

All of the above on one HTML page

March 23, 1995, first 24-bit image, by Lee Crocker. First use of adaptive filtering and the gAMA, tEXt, and tIME chunks.
 - goldhill.png - inline goldhill.png.html

March 25, 1995, first 24-bit interlaced image with alpha, by Lee Crocker. First use of zTXt, pHYs, and oFFs chunks.
 - hell.png - inline hell.png.html
-----------------------------------

I clicked a few here and there, but the images weren't archived at the time.
Later attempts to snapshot the page 404'd.  (There are LOTS of snapshots, but
I couldn't find any with images in the half dozen I tried.)

I do have copies of www_logo.png and www_logo_a7.png on some ancient CDs, as
well as opossum.png, goldhill.png, and hell.png.  Hmmm...actually, I still have
them on disk, too, though the timestamps differ from what he posted:

-rw------- 1 roelofs    4043 Mar 26  1995 www_logo.png
-rw------- 1 roelofs    6166 Mar 26  1995 www_logo_a0_sub.png
-rw------- 1 roelofs    5828 Mar 26  1995 www_logo_a7.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 roelofs   29511 Jun  1  1995 rpfamily_a0_c3.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 roelofs   40001 Jun  1  1995 rpfamily_a0_sub.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 roelofs   30567 Jun  1  1995 rpfamily_a7.png
-rw-r--r-- 2 roelofs  199636 Jun  1  1995 skyvase24.png
-rw-r--r-- 2 roelofs  792422 Jun  1  1995 goldhill.png
-rw-r--r-- 2 roelofs  675412 Jun  1  1995 hell.png

I vaguely recall rooting around in the swrinde and simplesystems ftp sites and
finding some of those, too, but at least the smaller ones might have been
mailed to the list at some point and maybe can still be found in the old mail
archives.  (If anyone still has an old cdrom.com "Internet" CD, it might have
some, too.)

The last three are present on libpng.org even today:

	http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/img_png/skyvase24.png
	http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/img_png/goldhill.png
	http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/img_png/hell.png

I know I used to have the arl_logo ones, as well, but currently I seem to have
only a later, interlaced variant:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 roelofs     609 Jun 26  1995 arl_logo_i.png

I've copied the missing ones to the same directory (with my original
timestamps); feel free to download and compare to other, potentially older
variants.  I can't swear that these are the unadulterated originals despite
the filenames.

Greg

P.S.  Oops, looks like arl_logo.png from 7 March wasn't compliant after all:

      "While writing the previous msg I realized the tRNS and PLTE chunks
       are out of order in arl_logo.png on godzilli.  I've fixed that and
       uploaded a new copy in incoming.   Ooops."