The company develops products such as IDL, ENVI, Jagwire, and Helios which are used in a variety of industries including defense and intelligence, environmental, engineering, aerospace, medical imaging, federal and civil governments, precision agriculture and academia worldwide.
The company's origin can be traced back to 1977 when David Stern was working at the University of Colorado on the Mariner Mars space probes.
[2] As his vision developed, Stern left the university and started working in his attic to improve the programming language.
[2] He incorporated Research Systems Inc. (RSI) and released IDL as a proprietary programming language for visualizing data.
Exelis Visual Information Solutions was purchased by Harris Corporation in 2015, becoming a subsidiary known as Harris Geospatial Solutions, Inc.[8] In 2019, Harris Corporation merged with L3 Technologies, Inc. and became L3Harris Technologies, Inc.[9] In 2023, NV5 Global, Inc. acquired L3Harris Geospatial Solutions, Inc., renaming it to NV5 Geospatial Software, Inc.[10] IDL (Interactive Data Language) is a scientific programming language used in particular areas of science, such as astronomy, meteorology, and medical imaging, to create meaningful visualizations out of complex numerical data.