A Brief History of Astrological Calculation SoftwareW
hen Matrix Software released the first astrology programs for personal
computers in 1977, a new era in astrology began. Initially loaded from
cassette tapes (and later floppy disks), the programs performed accurate calcu-
lations more quickly than possible by hand. They were, however, relatively
slow, only accurate for the twentieth century, had no built-in atlas or time
changes, and produced crude-looking black-and-white square charts and tables.
By 1986, several important astrology programs were available for IBM
PC compatibles, including the then state-of-the-art programs Blue*Star from
Matrix, CCRS and Nova from Astrolabe, and Graphic Astrology for Macin-
tosh computers from Time Cycles Research. These programs included circular
chart wheels with glyphs, an expanded ephemeris range, greater ability to cus-
tomize the defaults (e.g., house system, aspect set and orbs, etc.), bi- and tri-
wheels, and a wider range of predictive techniques and tables. Ironically, with
time, the DOS-based PC programs grew so sophisticated that they offered
some techniques and capabilities that are no longer available in today’s Win-
dows programs (e.g., Blue*Star by Matrix could find true occultations, and
also perform a set of jobs for everyone born in May or named Alice or having
Mars square Venus).
In 1992, Esoteric Technologies and Halloran Software released the first
serious astrology programs for Microsoft Windows, called Solar Fire and
AstrolDeluxe for Windows respectively. The advanced graphical capabilities of
the Windows environment ushered in an era of beautifully colored chart
wheels, graphs, and maps, much greater ease-of-use and ease-of-learning, trou-THEASTROLOGYBOOK [859]y
APPENDIX D
ASTROLOGICAL SOFTWARE
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