Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
— Satchel Paige
About Jon
Who Is Jon Nevins?
Jon is best known for writing the Form-U-Share (FUS) computer program. The program spans many different computer systems and has been used by more than 1,000 users over a 50 year period, mostly in the US but also in many foreign countries. At one point there was even a Spanish version and written manual.
Jon was employed by The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in their National Fertilizer Development Centers (NFDC) for 30 years. He worked with field programs which comprised the fertilizer introduction section. The mission was primarily to take new fertilizer products and processes produced at TVA chemical research labs, produced in NFDC production facilities and sell them to fertilizer companies to encourage adoption and eventually production by private industry. The liquid fertilizer and granulation fertilizer industries owe a lot to the pioneering efforts of NFDC.
NFDC was an interesting combination of federal programs and commercial production and sales. After inheriting World War I production facilities including phosphorous and nitrogen plants, NFDC turned toward post World War II needs for rapidly increasing agricultural productivity. Fertilizer was a key as well as agronomic research at land grant universities. NFDC not only had field offices at most universities but funneled money into their research programs.
Introducing Computer Technology
Form-U-Share was a major tool in helping this fertilizer introduction and adoption process. But also during this timeframe a major revolution was taking place in the world of computers. Jon and FUS helped the fertilizer industry adopt this emerging PC technology. FUS development started prior to the PC revolution with GE Timesharing, a forerunner to the Internet. There were about 60 companies brave enough to buy terminals and open a contract with GE, paying by the minute. One day our internal GE bill went ballistic running pipe cross reactor simulation studies and management was convinced to try buying our own computer. The same GE salesman who pitched GE timesharing had now opened a computer shop in Dallas and thought an Apple II could do the job. Approval was a problem since Computer Services said it was not a computer and Office Services said it was not office equipment. Our management said buy it anyway and before we knew it hundreds of our customers were running FUS on Apple II’s.
Farmland Industries approached us with the task of putting Nebraska Soil Test Recommendations on an Apple II and we did. Then we did Iowa and later Kansas. Farmland continued adding states. This was the beginning of a wonderful relationship with Farmland and a code sharing contract where some Pascal units were owned by TVA and some by Farmland using a published interface. This same architecture was used years later with Helena Chemical when FUS was converted to IBM Pascal for use on their AS400 computers. Other interfaces to Fox Pro and Clipper followed with companies like UAP, Wilbur Ellis, Alabama Farmers Cooperative and Western Farm Services.
The Apple Computers ran a version of UCSD Pascal. UCSD Pascal ran on top of a virtual p-machine for other computers. When the IBM PC was first introduced it ran 3 different operating systems. CPM, p-System and DOS from Microsoft. UCSD p-System also ran on many different computers at the time including Macintosh, Unix based machines, Radio Shack TRS-80’s and many more. The IBM PC was introduced the year Jon bought his first computer, an Apple III. He bought the computer because of uncertainty about NFDC’s future survival and continued support for the FUS project. He had just lost programming support and if FUS was to survive Jon had to become a programmer.
Jon was trained at Case Institute of Technology in Manage Science and Operations Research, where he worked in the computer lab running the Case IBM 650. In graduate school at North Carolina State he continued working in the computer lab on their 650. FUS began with Jon’s Doctoral dissertation and culminated in a PhD in Economics. Jon had financial support from TVA and was studying methodologies for conduction engineering cost studies. Particularly the cost comparisons between “High Analysis” and “Low Analysis” fertilizers. While Jon was proficient in operating punchcard equipment and the 650 Computer he had no training in programming.
Jon’s dream was for a personal computer but the term was yet to be invented. At Case his senior project was optimizing production of his dad’s new AmoPhos plant in Pasadena, Texas using linear programming. His computer was his roommate Ron, a research partner who was very fast with numbers. When Jon discovered GE timesharing the dream came true and FUS evolved first in Basic and then in Fortran 77.
The Linear Programming algorithm he had longed for began to evolve based on a very different approach called the symmetric dual. Jon had strong training in mathematical statistics and his exposure to LP in farm planning made little sense. When Jon arrived at TVA an old GE-215 computer in the basement had an LP program on it. With it was documentation from a Dr. Joseph V. Talacko at Marquette University explaining the symmetric dual as opposed to the traditional simplex method. It all came together with GE timesharing and the quick response to programming errors, FUS was being born. No more standing in line with a deck of punched cards. Progress really began when Jon had his own Apple III at home. FUS was going to happen with or without TVA.
Fortunately NFDC and FUS survived a long time. NFDC finally did lose its fertilizer research funding and Jon retired after 30 years. But with more than a thousand users and many major companies who had tied their financial systems to FUS, TVA had a problem. TVA policy permitted retraining or starting a new business as options. Jon chose the latter and Lion Software, Inc. was incorporated. Later a contract was negotiated which transferred the FUS and Form-U-Share service marks and the support responsibility. Jon changed the company name to FUS Support, Inc.
Transition To The Private Sector
Though frightening at first, the responsibility of supporting over 1000 users and turning a payroll for several employees turned out to be a wonderful experience. Jon was blessed with excellent employees and a gracious group of users who wanted the business to succeed. Users felt a part of the process of turning a user-friendly DOS Version into an even friendlier Windows version. Improving the inventory system and adding QuickBooks accounting met needs of new customers while making use by current customers even easier for more complicated tasks such as legal fertilizer tags.
TVA Technology Transfer Completed
After 16 years the company charter to transfer the TVA technology to the private sector was realized when the service marks and product was sold to Software Solutions Integrated (SSI). Jon still owns Lion Software, Inc. which now focuses on mobile computing and continuing relations with Association of American Plant Food Control Officials (AAPFCO) and AgGateway, an agricultural e-standards organization.
Jon’s current major project is promoting the Paperless Fertilizer Tonnage Reporting standard (PFTR). Jon spoke at an AAPFCO mid-year meeting in 2010 and encouraged the two organizations to get together. In 2009 Crop Production Services, which sells fertilizer in most states, pointed out the problem of reporting fertilizer sales to 47 different states with minor differences in forms. There is no federal fertilizer law. AAPFCO practices uniformity by consent. This is done through a series of Uniform Bills that no state implements exactly but all states use as a guide.
AAPFCO and TFI came to TVA in 1985 and asked NFDC to build the Uniform Tonnage Reporting System (UFTRS) program and to become the clearinghouse for all states to send their data to for consolidation and reporting to TFI. This began a long valuable history of detailed fertilizer tonnage reporting. Perhaps no other industry has such a rich public history of quantity and types of products. UFTRS also established standardization of reporting data including fertilizer codes, FIPS county codes, reporting periods and a standard format for PFTR (see WWW.AAPFCO.ORG). The UFTRS program is designed to accept this format and the program is still used by about 30 states.
The FUS program has PFTR to the UFTRS program built in but states and FUS users weren’t using it. UFTRS had been written at TVA at the same time Jon was developing FUS. Partly as a result of Jon’s 2010 paper, published in “AAPFCO Official Publication” AgGateway has now completed their task of developing the XML standard and schema. The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) is assuming responsibility for implementing the standard with AAPFCO.
Jon is continuing involvement with Object-Pascal and the new Fire Monkey Platform for cross-platform mobile development. Jon’s continuing efforts are to transfer NFDC technology to the fertilizer industry. Jon believes the role of mobile computing and cloud connections will have a major impact. Attached is a report on the current status of uDealMobile. When NFDC wrote UFTRS, UDEAL was also written as a tool for fertilizer dealers to submit their data.
Why is Jon so obsessed with the fertilizer industry?
Jon was born in a fertilizer plant, at least across the street from Southern Acid and Sulfur Company’s plant in North Little Rock, AR. His father, Sam, was plant manager and Jon loved playing in the bone house. They used to make fertilizer from bones. Sam was a leader in the industry and is known as the father of high-analysis fertilizer. Sam was instrumental in merging SASCO with Mathieson and later Olin. Jon worked in the office learning punched-card technology and attended every local IBM class available. Jon worked at the ammoniation-granulation plant lab one summer running inorganic analysis and one summer at the Squib data processing center in New York before attending IBM 205 school. He remembers trips to TVA with his dad who used a number of their patents. Some of Jon’s close friends and managers had worked for Sam. Jon has been an advocate for the industry all his life.
