The TechnoKats are one of the few teams (7?) who have been in FIRST since 1992. Over the years, we have stored many items of information in our filing cabinets. About two years ago, we decided to start putting this information into a digital format (scanning pictures into computer files, converting video to DVD, and scanning papers into pdf documents).
Delphi engineer Amy Przybylinski has led this project all of this time, while soliciting help from many people on the team. Recently, she has provided this information to the teamās webmaster, student Eric Jiang (also the lead animator). Eric and Amy have worked hard to get alot of information on this site that many teams may want to see.
Soā¦ with thanks to Amy, Eric, and the rest of the TechnoKats who helped with this, I direct you to the history section of the TechnoKats website: http://www.technokats.org/historyproject.php
This shows teams, results, game rules, event information, yearbook stuff, and even rules updates from years 1992-2000.
Wow. This is some cool stuff. Iāve been waiting for a resource like this for a long time. Take a look through the brackets from the 1998 season. It might take a minute to figure it all out, but once you do, youāll see a few epic matches in there. A big thank you to all the T-kats who made this happen.
Yeah, I get a kick going through all the old stuff at our site. The most fun thing is trying to figure out whoās who back in the day as in reference to now (I still canāt believe the Technokats were called the ScienceKats). Itās just cool to see how much FIRST has change over the years.
This is an ongoing project. Eventually, we do want to get the early year matches hosted so the FIRST community can see them. Most are now in DVD format.
As we make updates, someone from the team will update this thread and let folks know what is new.
This is going to be an invaluable resource. History, research, promotion, understanding, appreciation - it is wonderful.
A two year project is not easy to keep at the top of the list of priorities when others want to bump ahead and demand attention. That Amy and her fellow members of FRC Team 45 committed to the project and saw it through is really special in itself. Congratulations.
Thank you for sharing that. For the past two years I have tried to get more and more information about the games before my time and last year and before today there were always bumps and blocks in the way where FIRST usually cut me off or sometimes the teams that had the data did not go back far enough or was only team specific with pictures of the games and pictures of their bots, but this is great. Thank you for bringing back for some of us what was lost.
Just comparing some of the rules and some of the other stuff in the manual makes me realize how U.S. FIRST has changed and transformed into the FIRST that we all know of today.
Ms. Przybylinski and Mr Jiang did a wonderful job and a Thank You to the TechnoKats for publishing it for us.
Andy beat me to the punch in posting this infoā¦ Anywho, sorry it has taken so long to get this history stuff public! Intended for it to be ready last year, butā¦ ya know how it goes. Sooner than later (hopefully) weāll have the last 6 years up as well, just as soon as I get that info to Eric.
Check out the Photo Gallery tooā¦ We definitely have WAY more photos than what is on here, but the posted ones are some of the better onesā¦ and it would take forever to upload every picture.
It may be a little while before we get some videos online. I think after 150+ VHS tapes, weāre finally down to the last 10 or so to get convertedā¦Then itāll be a matter of converting to āonline formatā. BUT - we might have some of this stuff with us in Atlanta to play on our kioskā¦ but I just counted about 67 DVDs in my living room, so probably wonāt be bringing all of them! Hopefully I will be able to make a nice compiled list of everything we do have on video.
Hope youāre enjoying what we have up so farā¦ tried to put the stuff on our website that the FIRST community would be most interested inā¦ If you have questions, feel free to PM me.
First off let me say this is a great project and I am in no way surprised to see the TechnoKats leading the charge. I have often wondered how this might be accomplished on a FIRST wide basis. It is cool to put up generic stuff with regards to the various years and certainly a great place to start for an effort such as this. Just looking at my own collection of āFIRST stuffā from the last 11 years it is amazing to me how much Iāve picked up here and there pins, buttons, pamphlets, etc. etc., there must be so much of that kind of thing locked up in closets, etc. It would be great to memorialize it all some how. Bravo though to the TechnoKats for starting this effort. I hope it continues to grow I think looking back at were weāve come from provides a much deeper understanding of just what this FIRST thing is all about especially for kids, mentors, etc. who are just being exposed.
History of FIRST is an awesome thing. I spent Sunday watching some old 1997 Torroid Terror ESPN Footage on a tape I found in my room of FIRST history stuff I was going through from my team.
(Anyone know who I would contact to seek permission to digitize that and upload it somewhere online for all to enjoy?)
Too bad I didnāt see that one in particular before we started building this year. Those tube manipulators back then were pretty impressive.
Such a huge difference in the game and the field since then, but obviously no lack of excitement over the years for the program.
Outstanding work, I absolutely love it. This is a fantastic resource for looking into the often murky realms of FIRST past.
My only concern isā¦why is the only picture of a 116 bot a picture of our 2005 bot tipped over? :rolleyes:
Found this thread while looking for exactly what this thread is (FIRST history).
Iām looking to heavily update the pre-2003 game pages on wikipedia with pictures, winners, team counts, etc. Can I upload the images to wikipedia if there are any suitable ones?
Iām about to make a change based on what Iām reading in these news articles: The āchampionshipā in 1992-1994 was the only competition, right? There was no regional->national setup because there werenāt enough teams?
WOW, this is wonderful! You can bet when we revamp the NYC/NJ FIRST website to reflect new growth and incorporate our history, we will definitely be grabbing some of this information and linking out to this GREAT resource!
Alright, team 45ās stuff is now splattered all over the game pages for 1992-2000. Itās mainly used for references and images. I hope your website is relatively stable so those links donāt break.
On another note, many of your 2001 pdfs have broken links.
Well this is almost a 2yr project still in the works. Still working to get everything functional on the site but we should be stable enoughā¦ We only posted what we thought would be of most interest to the general FIRST community at this point. Pretty neat for the younger kids to see the games in existence before they were born!
Will ask our webmaster student if he can check on the broken links. We also have the last 6yrs of stuff ready to go up, but just needing the time.
Also just finished the 150+ VHS to DVD conversionā¦Some day, we might be able to get some online, but that will be a lot of work and time. But now I can finally get rid of the 4 storage totes of tapes at my place.
If anyone wants to stop by Team 45ās pit in Atlanta, we expect to have many of the DVDs with us to play on our kiosk, as well as some history stuff. We have video dating back to 1987! I may post a list of what video we do have in case people are interested.
BTW great job Amy & Team 45 - this is a well worth activity that Iāve been trying to do as well on our team but we have to move our whole facility in May/June this year so we have alot of upheaval going on right now.
According to an admin on wikipedia, I must get very explicit permission:
Short version: Do you permit your images to be uploaded to wikipedia under the GFDL? This means that your image may be modified, redistributed, and possibly used for commercial purposes.
Long version. Here is the wiki-recommended copyright-getting letter:
I am writing to confirm whether permission is granted to use the archived Technokats images from your website under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) ( GNU Free Documentation License - Wikipedia ).
You can read the GNU Free Document License in full at Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License - Wikipedia . (To keep things simple, we do not use Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts, or Back-Cover Texts.) The license stipulates that any copy of the material, even if modified, must carry the same license. This means that anyone would be licensed to distribute the material, possibly for a fee (we would distribute your work free of charge). Under the license, no distributor (commercial or otherwise) can restrict future distribution, so your work would never become proprietary. In addition, the license does not grant the right to imply your endorsement of a modified version.
Please note that your contributions may not remain intact as submitted; this license and the collaborative nature of our project entitles others to edit, alter, and update content at will, i.e., to keep up with new information, or suit the text to a different purpose. There is more information on our copyright policy at: Wikipedia:Copyrights - Wikipedia .
The article will be deleted in seven days time if permission is not confirmed, though it can be restored at a later date if you choose to respond later to state that such use is allowed.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to your response.
