European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT) was a series of integrated programmes of information technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 research and development

Research and development

The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...

 projects and industrial technology transfer

Technology transfer

Technology Transfer, also called Transfer of Technology and Technology Commercialisation, is the process of skill transferring, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that...

 measures. It was a European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

 initiative managed by the Directorate General for Industry (DG III) of the European Commission

European Commission

The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....

. Five ESPRIT programes (ESPRIT 0 to ESPRIT 4) ran consecutively from 1983 to 1998. ESPRIT 4 was succeeded by the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme in 1999.

Some of the projects and products supported by ESPRIT are:

• BBC Domesday Project
  BBC Domesday Project
  The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers Ltd, Philips, Logica and the BBC to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th century census of England...
  
  , a partnership between Acorn Computers Ltd, Philips, Logica and the BBC with some funding from the European Commission's ESPRIT programme, to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th century census of England. It is frequently cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.

• CGAL
  CGAL
  The Computational Geometry Algorithms Library is a software library that aims to provide easy access to efficient and reliable algorithms in computational geometry. While primarily written in C++, Python and Scilab bindings are also available....
  
  , the Computational Geometry Algorithms Library (CGAL) is a software library that aims to provide easy access to efficient and reliable algorithms in computational geometry. While primarily written in C++, Python bindings are also available. The original funding for the project came from the ESPRIT project.

• Open Document Architecture
  Open Document Architecture
  The Open Document Architecture and interchange format is a free and open international standard document file format maintained by the ITU-T to replace all proprietary document file formats...
  
  , a free and open international standard document file format maintained by the ITU-T to replace all proprietary document file formats. In 1985 ESPRIT financed a pilot implementation of the ODA concept, involving, among others, Bull corporation, Olivetti, ICL and Siemens AG.

• RAISE
  Raise
  Raise is a fell in the English Lake District. It stands on the main spine of the Helvellyn range in the Eastern Fells, between Thirlmere and Ullswater.-Topography:...
  
  , Rigorous Approach to Industrial Software Engineering, was developed as part of the European ESPRIT II LaCoS project in the 1990s, led by Dines Bjørner
  Dines Bjørner
  Professor Dines Bjørner is a Danish computer scientist.He specializes in research into domain engineering, requirements engineering and formal methods. He worked with Cliff Jones and others on the Vienna Development Method at IBM in Vienna...
  
  .

• REMORA methodology is an event-driven approach for designing information systems, developed by Colette Rolland
  Colette Rolland
  Colette Rolland is a French computer scientist and Professor of Computer Science in the department of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, and a leading researcher in the area of information and knowledge systems, known for her work in meta-modeling.-...
  
  . This methodology integrates behavioral and temporal aspects with concepts for modelling the structural aspects of an information system. In the ESPRIT I project TODOS, which has led to the development of an integrated environment for the design of office information systems (OISs),

• SAMPA
  SAMPA
  The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet ....
  
  : The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) is a computer-readable phonetic script originally developed in the late 1980s.

External links

• ESPRIT home page