# Golden Software

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Golden Software LLC Type Private company Industry Scientific Software Founded 1983 Headquarters PO Box 281, Golden, Colorado , USA 80401 Key people Zach Mills, CEO Patrick Madison, Founder Dan Smith, Founder Website www.goldensoftware.com

**Golden Software LLC** is a [privately held](/source/Privately_held_company), American company based in [Golden, Colorado](/source/Golden%2C_Colorado). It develops and markets a small catalog of [GIS](/source/Geographic_Information_System) and [scientific software](/source/Scientific_software).

Founded in 1983, Golden Software was the first to market three-dimensional surface and [contour mapping](/source/Topographic_map) applications for the [PC](/source/Personal_computer).[1]

## History

Patrick Madison, a [CSM](/source/Colorado_School_of_Mines) computer science instructor, and Dan Smith, a graduate student, began a partnership in 1983 with the development of a [printer interface language](/source/Page_description_language) that took advantage of the full resolution available to [dot-matrix printers](/source/Dot_matrix_printer).

Their first commercial program, **PlotCall**, transformed [plotter](/source/Plotter_(printer)) instructions into dot-matrix instructions compatible with over 20 commercial printers.[2] This opened the computer graphing and mapping market to the wider arena of users with inexpensive commercial printers.

Between 1985 and 1986 the company released two [DOS](/source/Disk_Operating_System) applications: **Surfer**, a [surface](/source/Surface_map) and [contour](/source/Contour_line) mapping program, and **Grapher**, a spreadsheet-plotting application.

In 1990 it released its first [Windows](/source/Windows_3.1) program: **MapViewer**. Their next product, **Didger** was released in 1996.

**Strater**, a subsurface log and cross section plotting application, and **Voxler**, a 3D well and volumetric data visualization application, began shipping in 2004 and 2006 respectively.

In October 2014, General Manager Blakelee Mills became CEO of Golden Software. Patrick Madison remained the company's President, and Dan Smith remained the lead developer.

Golden Software released its newest product, **Raster Tools** in April 2016. **Raster Tools** is an add-in for [Esri](/source/Esri)'s [ArcMap](/source/ArcMap) that creates raster data sets from XYZ data.

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Graham, Steve (February 15, 2007). "Mapping a global business model". *Mile High News*. p. 23.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** ["PC: the independent guide to IBM personal computers"](https://books.google.com/books?id=Wz5VAAAAMAAJ&q=plotcall). *PC: The Independent Guide to IBM Personal Computers*. **3**. San Francisco, Calif.: Software Communications, c1982: 170, 381. March 1984. [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [0745-2500](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0745-2500).

- Administrator. ["Golden Software History"](http://www.goldensoftware.com/company/history). *Golden Software*. Retrieved August 4, 2014.

- Grant, Felix (January 2006). ["Visualisation: Golden Software"](http://www.scientific-computing.com/scwnovdec02review_golden.html). *Software Reviews*. Scientific Computing World. Retrieved October 24, 2008.

## External links

- [Official website](http://www.goldensoftware.com/)

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