Through a conversation on LinkedIn, it became clear to me I really haven’t yet given details on the three legacies I discovered. The vision and data making AniMap what it is today.
Since I cannot know them personally, I will give the best shot of what I know of them.
Who was Art Lassange? Actually, I don’t know a lot about him and his life. But I know his sons. Still contact them occasionally as need arises.
If you search for details on Art, first link for information is Bass Angler Magazine. Immediately is hear what? Mark Lassange is the owner of this magazine and a professional bass angler himself. Art’s other son, Barry chose a life in IT having worked at Apple for a period of his career.
Art published many books, opened his own business, Gold Bug. The history of Gold Bug is found on both Bass Angler’s Magazine and AniMap. AniMap being the second like showing up in my search “Art Lassange AniMap and Gold Bug”, using Duck-Duck Go. Using Google none of them on the first three pages.
Gold Bug was a business selling metal detectors, gold pans, prospecting equipment and books on treasure hunting related topics.
It wasn’t until 1994 Art with Gold Bug moved into software development publishing AniMap.
I believe it was 1997 or 1998 the last version of Art’s AniMap was released. Current version here is 3.0.2.
This is all I know of Art. This story was enough to tell me what legacy he left the genealogy and historical research community must be carried forward.
There is so much more on Adrian Ettlinger and his accomplishments. Wikipedia, details it all.
Adrian started work, CBS he led development of the first computerized on-air switching control, where in 1976 he was awarded the David Sarnoff Medal. Conceptualized and was project coordinator for the first practical stop-action, instant replay.
Adrian first developed the computer controlled theater lighting system and was the first to use a video display. This was patented by Adrian.
In 1996, in Videography magazine, it’s 20th anniversary edition, The Age of Videography, named Adrian Ettlinger as one of the 18, then living “People who made a difference” in video production technology. He was called “the father of modern video post production.”
When Adrian retired from television he worked on other projects. July 1993 he completed a decades long effort of visiting every county in the United States, with his last being Blanco County, Texas. Adrian and his wife, Carol were made honorary citizens of the county by Judge Charles Scott.
In all of this and more, Adrian found time to develop the first version of AniMap. Read on if you want to more as this life didn’t stop here and Adrian wasn’t done.
John Hamilton Long has even less information about the person. His legacy is The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries being the editor and historical complier behind the data used in AniMap.
Often I feel my life became all three combined into one. Not any where close to the scale of what these men accomplished.
But their stories told me the same thing consistently. This all their work, each in their own way connected to people first. Data, accessibility to other people was crucial in everything these men did.
I cannot speak for them in fact of what made my choices. I cannot talk to any one of them as time ends sadly for everyone. They are gone, they did great things, that requires stewardship; not pay walls.
I will never know if their goal was what I turned the goal of AniMap into. But I know I carry forward a story of AniMap. A story started by three men’s chapters they left behind. When three years ago I was hit with all of their stories. Animap no longer updated. Windows 98 was a system requirement, Windows 11 was released. Arm processors including Apple’s M1 was released. All at risk of a valuable work, created a valuable product facing near obsolescence.
My goal. AniMap will be free for everyone before I am done. The subscriptions I hate will die here. That is mission driven.
AniMap will be driven solely on contributions in the future. Contributions because the agree and support this work demands stewardship, open to everyone. Only one cost will remain, an option. Not because of what feature you gain. But noting requires security by individual user. That requires manual account setups for your data security. One time cost will be pricing in a fair and honest manner, where cost is cost, not profits.
Stewardship has a cost for security, control and to grow the dataset, develop more features. That cost is fixed to give more, not make more.