Bear Code

Subtitled “a classification system for bears, and bear-like men”, the Natural Bears Classification System, often shortened to NBCS or the Bear Code, is the first sig code.

Because “Bears” mean so many things to different people, because bears come in all shapes and sizes and have different sexual proclivities, because classified ad prices are SOOOOOO expensive, we (while eating lunch at a Boulder, Colorado, Wendy’s on Thanksgiving weekend, 1989) came up with this incredibly-scientific system to describe bears and bear-like men.

Since we both have interests in astronomy, we are well-versed in star and galaxy classification systems, which use prototypes to set the standards for describing things. Rather than just saying something is of “Type I” or “Type II” (etc.), it is better to use natural features to describe an object, in particular as a continuum of a range of features. Such is the case with bears.

The term “bear” had only come into popular use a few years prior, credited to a July 26, 1979 article “Who’s Who at the Zoo?” in The Advocate magazine written by George Mazzei and illustrated by Gerard Donelan. Likewise, the founding of Bear Magazine in 1987 — initially as a photocopied “zine” — predates the code by only two years.

The code owes its origin to compact stellar classification codes, mostly likely those described in An Atlas of Stellar Spectra (Morgan, Keenan, and Kellman, 1943).

The first known post featuring an NBCS code was on 1990-02-21. A later post notes that the NBCS was “intended” for the “Mail.Bears list”, and that “I think the next revision of the NBCS should be posted to both .motss and Mail.Bears”.

Versions between 1.0 and 1.7 are not well documented, but seem to have evolved gradually across 1990, with author Bob Donahue alluding to version 1.5 as current in a message dated 1990-03-07.