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lookingdesk | 3 months ago

I checked the TIFF talk page and found comments from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Scarlsen

Turns out the answer was on Wikipedia already :).

discuss

order

svat|3 months ago

Thanks! If you look at his (logged-in) edits on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Scarlsen ), then apart from the lone comment on the talk page (about the reason for "42") and creating that user page, he has two edits to the TIFF article:

- one of them clarifies the (non-)involvement of Microsoft: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TIFF&diff=prev&ol...

- and the other is even more interesting: though he is being scrupulous and removing a sentence that has no published citations, in his edit summary he confirms that it is basically true:

> The author of the original TIFF specification wanted TIFF to stand for "The Image File Format", but he was overruled by Aldus' president Paul Brainerd on the grounds that it sounded presumptuous.

(The edit summary says: Removed the "The Image File Format" sentence, since it only has eye-witness support (me, for one), but no published citatations)

vanderZwan|3 months ago

Ok so then we could technically edit it back in since he's a primary source, right?

oidar|3 months ago

His lone comment:

>Yes it is true: the second word of a TIFF file, 42, was indeed taken from the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, from Hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galaxy. StephenECarlsen 23:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

adzm|3 months ago

If anyone can contact John Buck this sounds like information he'd be interested in. Also an interesting avenue for future investigative work.