Professor Michael Barnsley of Georgia Tech, author of FRACTALS
EVERYWHERE, and formulator of Iterated Function Systems (IFS) filed
for a patent about a year ago on algorithms he claimed would be
capable of fast and massive compression of graphical images.

There was a minor flap in the mathematics community at the time,
since some thought mathematicians should not be able to "own"
fundamental results. Since then rumors abound as to the efficiency of
the scheme Barnsley believes he has. Some say it is not really a
fractal compression method at all, but something he discovered during
the course of his work with IFSs. Others say that he has not yet
licked the hardware end of the problem.	 Plates 9.8.1-9.8.13 in
FRACTALS EVERYWHERE are early examples of fractal compressed images.
(This includes the picture of the "Andes Girl" on the cover.)

Presumably he showed up at COMDEX this fall with a 3 minute full
animation video compressed onto a 1.2Mb disk.

His company, Iterated Systems, Inc., offers C development toolkits
ranging in price from $5 to $100.

Iterated Systems, Inc.
Suite 545
5550 Peachtree Parkway
Norcross, Georgia 30092