Already the jellybeans have been dispatched (and eaten) and it is a time for reminiscence. Harking back to their origins LGC remind us that in 1982, 3D seismic interpretation was done on massive and expensive mainframe computers (PDM old timers even saw it done by folding paper sections at every tie line to end up with colored concertinas). Landmark's founding fathers Roice Nelson, Andy Hildebrand, John Mouton and Bob Limbaugh revolutionized the oil and gas industry with an affordable "console-sized" workstation for geophysical interpretation.
Heavy man..
Console sized was of course a euphemism for very big, the "Landmark III" weighed more than 1,000 pounds and was about the size of a (Texan) household refrigerator on its side. It was described as the world’s largest DOS-based system with 440 megabytes of disk storage and costing nearly $250,000. John Mouton, said "In the early days, we would have dearly loved to use an off-the-shelf workstation, but we judged everything as hopelessly weak. We had to design and assemble nearly every aspect of the system from the printed circuit boards to the custom cabinets. The power cables looked like fire hoses and an elephant could have stood on it without causing any damage." Landmark has always been an international company, and shipped its first three systems to BHP in Melbourne, Australia, Enterprise Oil in London and Sun Oil in Dallas. Since then, Landmark claims sales of over 75,000 software licenses to oil and gas companies located in 84 countries. PDM wishes LGC many happy returns.
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