ASCOM Hall of Fame

Many people have participated significantly by writing drivers and tools, providing useful information, and helping with interface agreements, etc. The following people have made particularly significant contributions to the ASCOM Initiative. They are listed in no particular order:

• Tom Andersen and Ted Leckie - For seeing the logic in ASCOM and the driver/client architecture early on, and providing a grant to develop the first set of drivers.
• Doug George - For "getting it" right at the beginning and adding a non-trivial scripting interface to MaxIm DL immediately thereafter. He also authored the Camera. Focuser, and FilterWheel interfaces, basing them on real-world experience with MaxIm.
• Larry Weber and Steve Brady - for their fabulous FocusMax autofocus software, evangelizing ASCOM as being absolutely necessary for FocusMax's success, and for driving the Focuser standard.
• Jon Brewster - For developing several drivers and simulators, the current Meade drivers, POTH, Pipe/Hub, and generally being a guiding light. He even went to Meade one time to get the "low down" for the Meade drivers.
• Tim Long - For dragging us all into the world of .NET, writing drivers and tools, helping with .NET issues, and being a moderator for the ASCOM Talk group.
• Jonathan Fay - For the Worldwide Telescope which puts Microsoft behind ASCOM and for the .NET Client Toolkit that provides .NET client software with automatic easy access to both early- and late-bound drivers.
• Peter Simpson - For the important driver conformance checker and lots of professional-class testing, particularly of Platform 5.
• John Oliver - For his work on the dome geometry code used in POTH and by several other programs, and for his role in the Dome interface agreement.
• Dan Azari - For authoring the Rotator interface.
• Joe Shuster - For quietly doing the lion's share of moderating the ASCOM-Talk forum.
• Ray Gralak - For constantly grinding on us to address the Macintosh OS and Linux, and providing useful suggestions in that vein.
• Chris Rowland - For developing the incredibly complex Celestron unified driver, tools for extending interfaces in VB6, rigorous testing, and always providing clear and unwavering advice and counsel.
• Ajai Sehgal - For putting a ton of work into the high-profile Astro-Physics and Gemini drivers, and supporting them in the face of firmware changes beyond his control.
• Chris Peterson - For being a very knowledgeable curmudgeon, keeping us honest, and helping people with concise and correct information.
• Stef Cancelli - For the graphical and logic design of this new ASCOM web site. It might not seem that way, but it took a lot of his time to do it.
• Peter Eschman - For the original Driver Checker tool.
• Bob Denny - For many things...