Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data:

Boeing began developing the Tiger system in the year of 1979. Integrating B-splines with rational Bezier representation quickly led to rational B-splines. Boeing felt so strongly regarding NURBS that they proposed them as part of the standard to the August 1981 International Graphics Exchange standard meeting. In spite of the success of NURBS and the great deal of work put into its development, Boeing abandoned Tiger in teh year of 1984.

SDRC (Structural Dynamics Research Corporation) bought NURBS commercially. In the year 1978, the company started working on a modeler. Following Versprille, SDRC decided to utilize NURBS as a single representation form. Progress was announced publicly in the year 1982, and the modeler, called Geomod, was released in the year 1983. It was the first commercial modeler based wholly on NURBS.

B-splines have been the subject of much work at the University of Utah. After many years of research, Riesenfeld and his group put their research results into a modeler called as Alpha-1 .For several years, Alpha-1 has served as a research environment, but recently Engineering Geometry Systems built a commercial version available.

The above groups extremely influenced the development of NURBS technology. Several companies followed their paths. Intergraph Corporation started with Bezier in the B-surf-modeler in the year of 1982 and incorporated non-uniform B-splines and NURBS in the year 1984. In the year of 1985, they started to develop a new system called I/EMS based entirely on NURBS.

The quick proliferation of NURBS is due partly to their excellent properties and partly to their incorporation in such national and international standards as PHIGS, IGES, Product Data Exchange Specification and International Standard Office Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data.