Wolfgang BÖRNER | April 8, 2020 | 10 am
CHNT 01, 1996 – CHNT 05, 2000
The next blogs will deal with the history of computational archaeology and cultural heritage in the last 25 years, the history of CHNT, and also their participants.
On November 13th, 1996 the first event took place in the former Data Centre of Vienna City Department for Information and Communication Technology.
In the first years, the name of the conference was still “Archäologie & Computer”, and in the proceedings of the first conference, Ortolf Harl, the head of the Vienna’s Urban Archaeology department at that time, wrote: “To master the plenitude of the archaeological material it is inevitable to use a computer. Well, a computer is a MUST! … However: with the meal the appetite grows. Well: a conference is a MUST!”
These statements are still valid, although computers have changed a lot, and are nowadays often integrated in smartphones or tablets.
iIn the year 1996 – 60 participants and speakers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland presented GIS applications, databases, matrices, survey and measuring software (see proceedings 1996 [pdf 31 MB]).
The Workshop was planned as a singular event, but the organisation decided to continue in the next year.
In the year 1997 the number of participants increased. For this reason it was agreed that the Workshop 1998 lasted for two days.
In the first years the focus of the presentation were GIS, CAD, databases, web applications, statistics and aerial photography
The first Virtual Reality Application was presented 1999 – “Der Vatikanische Palast im Zeitalter der Hochrenaissance” by Manfred Koob, Technical University of Darmstadt. The mapping was done in the Centre of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Genf, Switzerland, because no computer had the “power” to do it.
The conference grew and therefore the conference venue moved to the Wappensaalgruppe in the Vienna City Hall in 2001.
But this is another story, which I will tell you in two weeks!
One additional information: In the next week we will upload the CHNT proceedings starting from 1996 until 2008 (CHNT 13, 2008 is already available).