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Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri
It seems that most of the low numbered teams were started by companies (UTC, J&J, Delphi) rather than the newer teams that are started by students.
Our school was approached by J&J in 97 and the team was formed for the 1998 season.
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As for 116, Dave Lavery saw FIRST somewhere and decided that NASA should be involved. So in 1996 he found a school near him to host a team and found money in NASA.
FIRST has shifted its funding mentality since the early days. For 1992, Dean got companies together with a school, a major sponsor for the school. The idea was to get companies behind 'their' teams and to allow the teams to focus on the science and technology of building the robot. That worked for a few years, with teams having a major corporate sponsor. Then a funny thing happened. Students got excited about it. Some moved to new schools and pushed and got one there. More went to college but didn't want to stop, so they started there. Some teachers saw it somewhere, and wanted to start one where they were. These people were excited enough to do the legwork to secure funding from all over the place. If it took 40 sponser of $250 each, when then we'll find them.
You can look at a growth chart of the number of teams and see where that trend started. Excited and motivated students and teachers can do amazing things.
Wetzel