F.I.R.S.T. Gesellschaft für technisch-wissenschaftliche Softwareanwendungen mbH, based in Wermelskirchen, came into being in 1989. The company's goal is to continuously improve CONVAL®, a software product for PCs that was developed by the founding fathers during the years preceding the startup, and to sell it in the international marketplace. The idea for CONVAL® was born in the late seventies and originally realized in the guise of small routines for programmable pocket calculators. Several of the calculation modules that today are integral components of CONVAL® existed in a simplified form even then. In 1985 a team of experienced engineers from the fields of instrumentation and control, chemical processes and machine building, as well as various other branches of industry, joined forces with software development experts. At the end of a development phase lasting four years, they were able to present the first results - christened CONVAL® 1.0 - at INTERKAMA '89. In addition to CONVAL®, F.I.R.S.T. today also offers consulting and customized software development mainly for technical applications.