History
-------

:audience:`all`

The concept of using device servers to access devices was first proposed at the `ESRF <https://www.esrf.eu>`_ 
in 1989. 
It has been successfully used as the heart of the ESRF Control System of the institute accelerator complex. 
This control system was called TACO. 
TACO was based on the SUN RPC (as is the NFS protocol) and C as its core programming language.

In 1999, a renewal of the ESRF distributed control system was started with the aim of replacing SUN/RPC with CORBA, using C++ as the 
core programming languages. The new software was called TANGO and was developed as a collaboration. 
In June 2002, Soleil and ESRF offically decide to collaborate to develop this renewal of the old TACO control
system. 
`Soleil <https://www.synchrotron-soleil.fr/>`_ is a French synchrotron radiation facility based close to Paris. 
In December 2003, Elettra joined the club. `Elettra <https://www.elettra.trieste.it/>`_ is an Italian
synchrotron radiation facility located in Trieste. 
Beginning of 2005 ALBA also decided to join. 
`ALBA <https://www.cells.es/en/>`_ is a Spanish synchrotron radiation facility located in Barcelona. 
`DESY <http://www.desy.de/>`_ and `MaxIV <https://www.maxiv.lu.se/>`_ were the next big synchrotrons in Europe to join the collaboration.
After that things speeded up and more and more sites doing diverse things adopted Tango.