Golden Software Inc. is a privately held

Privately held company

A privately held company or close corporation is a business company owned either by non-governmental organizations or by a relatively small number of shareholders or company members which does not offer or trade its company stock to the general public on the stock market exchanges, but rather the...

, American company based in Golden, Colorado

Golden, Colorado

The City of Golden is a home rule municipality that is the county seat of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States. Golden lies along Clear Creek at the edge of the foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Founded during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush on 16 June 1859, the mining camp was...

. It develops and markets a small catalog of GIS

Geographic Information System

A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...

 and scientific software.

Founded in 1983, Golden Software is one of the world's oldest software companies, and the first to market three-dimensional surface and contour mapping

Topographic map

A topographic map is a type of map characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief, usually using contour lines in modern mapping, but historically using a variety of methods. Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and man-made features...

 applications for the PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

.

History

Patrick Madison, a CSM

Colorado School of Mines

The Colorado School of Mines is a small public teaching and research university devoted to engineering and applied science, with special expertise in the development and stewardship of the Earth's natural resources. Located in Golden, Colorado, CSM was ranked 29th, in America among national...

 computer science instructor, and Dan Smith, a graduate student, began a partnership in 1983 with the development of a printer interface language

Page description language

A page description language is a language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap. An overlapping term is printer control language, but it should not be confused as referring solely to Hewlett-Packard's PCL...

 that took advantage of the full resolution available to dot-matrix printers

Dot matrix printer

A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth, or in an up and down motion, on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like the print mechanism on a typewriter...

.

Their first commercial program, PlotCall, transformed plotter instructions into dot-matrix instructions compatible with over 20 commercial printers. 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

Disk operating system

Disk Operating System and disk operating system , most often abbreviated as DOS, refers to an operating system software used in most computers that provides the abstraction and management of secondary storage devices and the information on them...

 applications: Surfer, a surface

Surface map

In mathematics, geology, and cartography, a surface map is a 2D perspective representation of a 3-dimensional surface.Surface maps usually represent real-world entities such as landforms or the surfaces of objects. They can, however, serve as an abstraction where the third, or even all of the...

 and contour

Contour

Contour may refer to:* an outline or silhouette* a contour line on a contour map, or the corresponding line on the ground or sea bed* Contour , a phonetic sound* Pitch contour , a melody shape...

 mapping program, and Grapher, a spreadsheet-plotting application.

In 1990 it released its first Windows program: MapViewer. Their next product, Didger was released in 1996.

Their most recent programs, Strater and Voxler began shipping in 2004 and 2006.

Products

Golden Software programs are used in a wide variety of professional geological applications. They have been described as "user-friendly and accessible".

• PlotCall a DOS graphics-printing program
• Surfer, a surface and contour mapping program
• Grapher, a plotting
  Plot (graphics)
  A plot is a graphical technique for representing a data set, usually as a graph showing the relationship between two or more variables. The plot can be drawn by hand or by a mechanical or electronic plotter. Graphs are a visual representation of the relationship between variables, very useful for...
  
   application
• MapViewer, a georeferencing
  Georeference
  To georeference something means to define its existence in physical space. That is, establishing its location in terms of map projections or coordinate systems. The term is used both when establishing the relation between raster or vector images and coordinates, and when determining the spatial...
  
   cartography program
• Didger, a georeferencing
  Georeference
  To georeference something means to define its existence in physical space. That is, establishing its location in terms of map projections or coordinate systems. The term is used both when establishing the relation between raster or vector images and coordinates, and when determining the spatial...
  
  , map and log digitizing
  Digitizing
  Digitizing or digitization is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or a signal by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal...
  
  , and coordinate-conversion
  Coordinate system
  In geometry, a coordinate system is a system which uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of a point or other geometric element. The order of the coordinates is significant and they are sometimes identified by their position in an ordered tuple and sometimes by...
  
   package
• Strater, a well and borehole logging
  Well logging
  Well logging, also known as borehole logging is the practice of making a detailed record of the geologic formations penetrated by a borehole. The log may be based either on visual inspection of samples brought to the surface or on physical measurements made by instruments lowered into the hole...
  
  application
• Voxler, a 3D volumetric modeling and analysis program