Editing POV-Ray (section)

==History==
[[File:Vase on a pedestal, rendered with DKBTrace 2.12.png|thumb|A vase on a pedestal rendered with DKBTrace 2.12]]
Sometime in the 1980s, David Kirk Buck downloaded the [[source code]] for a [[Unix]] ray tracer to his [[Amiga]]. He experimented with it for a while and eventually decided to write his own ray tracer named DKBTrace after his initials. He posted it to the "You Can Call Me Ray" [[bulletin board system]] (BBS) in Chicago, thinking others might be interested in it. In 1987, Aaron A. Collins downloaded DKBTrace and began working on an [[x86]] port of it. He and David Buck collaborated to add several more features.  POV also had/has similarities with (and borrows from) Rayshade, another BBS era raytracer, including the short but good [[Rayshade]] book.

When the program proved to be more popular than anticipated, they could not keep up with demand for more features. Thus, in July 1991, David turned over the project to a team of programmers working in the "GraphDev" [[Online forum|forum]] on [[CompuServe]]. At the same time, David felt that it was inappropriate to use his initials on a program he no longer maintained.  The name "STAR-Light" (Software Taskforce on Animation and Rendering) was initially used, but eventually the name became "PV-Ray", and then ultimately "POV-Ray" (Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer),<ref name="POV-Ray 25"/> a name inspired by [[Salvador Dalí|Dalí]]'s painting, ''[[The Persistence of Memory]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.0/7/ |title=Documentation: 1.1.5 The Early History of |publisher=POV-Ray |access-date=2014-05-05}}</ref><ref name="flossweekly2008"/>

Features of the application, and a summary of its history, are discussed in a February 2008 interview with David Kirk Buck and Chris Cason on episode 24 of [[FLOSS Weekly]].<ref name="flossweekly2008">{{cite web|url=http://twit.tv/floss24 |title=The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte |publisher=Twit.tv |access-date=2014-05-05 |date=2008-02-07}}</ref>