Employees answering translation queries (using the latest
technology)

The history of the dictionary

II New dictionary software (2000 - 2006)
Along with the changes in the team came a change in server technology. Over the Christmas holidays 1999, Elmar Bartel developed the very first version of his dictQuery software which - after the expected glitches and teething problems - was put into operation in February 2000. The redesign of the software had become necessary because the constantly increasing number of queries had become too great for the initial infrastructure (based on Apache, Perl scripts and a Wais databasea) to handle. To give you an idea of the difference between now and then: while four queries per second used to be enough to bring the server to its knees, the current (2010) dictQuery version - after a host of modifications and revisions on its way to maturity - can now handle 700 queries per second with comparative ease.
The second phase was also a break from the previous content-management approach. Instead of voluntary helpers and IT experts with only limited language skills, the first qualified translator was hired to scrutinise the content with her professional eye (something direly needed after the previous years). This move was made possible by the TU München and the Deutsche Wissenschaftsnetz granting permission for the sale of advertising space on the LEO website to fund the position. Other milestones that were achieved in this period include the launch of the German-French dictionary, the vocabulary trainer and discussion forums.

Herald announcing the start of LEO's independence before the gates of
Munich (in the background Isar and Frauenkirche)

The history of the dictionary

III On the path to independence: LEO GmbH takes over (2006 - 2007)
Since 1 April 2006, the dictionary services have been provided by LEO GmbH. While the team and the LEO concept - of offering all content for free - remained unchanged, the whole setting of the venture changed on more than one level: offices relocated from the north to the south of Munich, entrepreneurial novices had to assume full responsibility for all 'benefits and liabilities' (with all the advantages and disadvantages that entailed), translators were offered permanent contracts to guarantee continuity in the expansion and maintenance of the dictionaries (difficult in the context of a technical university), competition had to be faced up to without any ifs and buts, and new server structures needed to be set up using a commercial hosting service. In short, numerous technical and entrepreneurial hurdles had to be overcome in the first two years until our lion felt settled in the new environment.
The major challenges on a programming level included:

• The integration of the German-Spanish dictionary.

• The complete redesign of the forum software which among other things required the change to a PostgreSQL database because the old software was no longer capable of handling the flood of postings.

• The expansion of the vocabulary trainer into a more powerful language trainer allowing users to set up study groups and upload their own exercises and lessons.

Wiring and heat sinks of the new
state-of-the-art server solution

The history of the dictionary

IV New dictionaries and improved server availability (2008 - 2009)

2008 saw the launch of the Italian and Chinese dictionaries after a long period of preparation. Chinese with its logographic writing system using either simplified or traditional characters (with no spaces between words) supplemented by Pinyin transliteration, was previously unknown territory and it took us two years to deal with all the problems the language presented. As we believe that dictionaries without enough content are of little use, we felt that one year's preparation for the Italian one was the absolute minimum. Unperturbed by all these challenging demands, the team was not afraid to take on the next project: Russian-German.

All the while, queries to the dictionary have continued to rise and have required us to pay increasing attention to the issue of server availability. We gladly accepted an offer of IP Exchange GmbH to set up a second server location in Nuremberg in addition to the existing one in Munich. While getting our services to run from two locations was no mean feat, being able to provide the service via two separate arteries and knowing that a complete outage is now impossible, was well worth the effort. A total of 14 servers currently handle the queries to the dictionaries, forums and trainers and at both locations, a load balancer ensures that queries are evenly distributed to the dictionary servers.

Bowing to demands from users - German-Russian expands existing dictionary portfolio

The history of the dictionary

V Russian and new dictionary features (2010)

Even with a starting base as the foundation for our Russian-German dictionary, it still took us a whole year to edit the content and make the necessary technical adjustments. Apart from extracting the original content into a file format which we could work with, the issue of the Cyrillic alphabet, which is different to that of western European languages and consequently requires a different character encoding system, needed to be addressed, the original content to be tagged according to our notation system, the dictionary pages to be translated, and the forums and trainer to be set up .... This may serve as an explanation for why the 'wish list' of desired new language pairs grows much faster than our actual dictionary portfolio.

Another reason for the moderately-paced growth is the fact that much of our attention has been taken up by the new version of the language trainer which offers the possibility of searching for inflected words from within a text so that users can easily put together word lists for exercises they have uploaded. In the last one and a half years, we have been working hard on algorithms that can derive possible base forms from inflected words which are normally not included in the dictionaries. This, however, is a major project that is far from complete and will probably keep us busy for the foreseeable future. The new search algorithms enable us to offer users the option of searching comfortably for words from within a text. Using the dictionaries in the so-called text mode, a whole text can be entered in a text field and a click on one or several words in the field will bring up a list of translations. This means words do not necessarily have to be typed in the search field anymore.

Transmitting the instructions for the first
LEO dictionary app with an early smart-phone device

The history of the dictionary

VI Apps - The future is mobile (2010/2011)

The first attempts at making the dictionaries not only virtual but also mobile were rather feeble - which is no surprise given the technical possibilities. Between November 1999 and April 2000 users could (if they were lucky) consult the dictionaries on certain mobile phones via WAP (Wireless Access Protocol). We ended the project on 15 April 2000, as documented in the "milestones" where you will find the laconic explanation: "Suspension of the WAP interface until upgrade of dictQuery to multi protocol functionality". And in fact we dropped the initiative without shedding a tear. In a second attempt in November 2003, we set up a short messaging service in cooperation with burdawireless GmbH. But expectations turned out to be significantly higher than demand and after many months in which we didn't even make enough money with the service to buy each LEO employee two scoops of ice cream, it was decided that we would drop it again - the phone charges, the cumbersome way of sending a query and then having to wait for the results as well as the data limit per SMS all proved to be insurmountable obstacles.

It was only when smart-phones came on the scene that there was any dramatic change: easy usability, the possibility of mobile Internet flatrates and larger displays also made solutions for mobile dictionaries appealing again. Since LEO's resources are generally limited, we needed to wait and see which operating systems would establish themselves in the long-term. By the middle of February 2010 we were able to offer the first mobile solutions for Android, Blackberry, iPhone and Palm. The run on the small downloadable applications (in short: apps) was in stark contrast to the disappointments of the first attempts mentioned above: in July 2011, we counted more than two million downloads for the LEO apps that were available at the time for the major operating systems.

The current team (we felt it wise to put mainly our Graces on view rather than spoil the picture with some of our more unsightly male members)

The team

Management
Hans (Kili) Riethmayer	Coordination, advertising, spelling tolerance
Hard- and software
Elmar Bartel	Server development (dictQuery), analysis tools
Fabian	Forum software, language trainer, personalisation
Martin	Bookmarklets, plugins, sound engineering
Uli	Hardware/LAN
Stephan	Redesign of vocabulary mapping from 'external to internal'
Georg	Smartphones
Maritta	Webdesign
Editorial staff
German-English
Doris	Content management German-English dictionary
Verena	Content management German-English dictionary
David	English pronunciation sound files
German-French
Céline Justine	Content management German-French dictionary, idiomatic French
German-Spanish
Mercè	Content management German-Spanish dictionary
German-Chinese
Richard	Content-management German-Chinese dictionary
Ran	Chinese editorial support, Chinese localisation
German-Italian
Fabio	Content management German-Italian dictionary
German-Russian
Victoria Larissa	Content management German-Russian dictionary
German-Portuguese/Brazilian
Caro Julia	Content management German-Portuguese dictionary
German-Polish
Justine	Content management German-Polish dictionary
Administration
Claudia	Accounting

Milestones 2006-2010

2011	The latest developments are reported on the News page, older news can be found under News 2011.
2010-04 until 2010-12	Since all developments are documented in detail on our News page, we would like to refer you to the News 2010 if you want to read up on all the changes that took place in 2010.
2010-02-18	Following the latest trends in technology, we have complemented the existing solution for small-screen devices pda.leo.org with applications for smart-phones including Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Palm. Fabian Heuwieser developed the solution for 'BB' and Stefan Henze the one for Palm while the LEO team provided the Android and iPhone apps.
2010-11-16	Céline succeeds Fabienne as new editor of the German-French dictionary as Fabienne moves back to her home country.
2009-09-16	A cooperation with Gabler Verlag allows us to offer our users German definitions for important economic terms.
2009-04-01	The third anniversary of LEO GmbH sees a number of staff changes: Luca Melchior has taken on a new job and is currently introducing his successor, Fabio D'Agostini, to the editorial ins and outs of the German-Italian dictionary. But, even though he has a new job, Luca has not left LEO completely; he will continue to work for us, but for fewer hours. Victoria Lessina has taken on the challenge of editing the data provided by ABBYY Europe for the German-Russian dictionary in compliance with our standards -- a gigantic task that will require a lot of work! Manuel Rösner is to lend the team a hand in the Sisyphean task of coordinating the various language verions of the constantly growing facilities in the vocab trainers and forum sections.
2009-02-18	ABBYY Europe GmbH provides a generous starting base for the creation of a German-Russian dictionary as part of a cooperation agreement with LEO.
2009-02-15	Testing starts for the new pronunciation feature which we will use for all Roman languages. The pronunciation is generated by Voice Reader, a software developed by Linguatec GmbH (see milestone 2008-10-30), and is available for all entries apart from those that have been recorded by a member of the LEO team.
2009-01-30	The correct stroke order for writing Chinese characters is now illustrated by an animated, as well as a static, sequence of strokes. The animations and pictures are based on the eStroke online software by EON Media Limited.
2009-01-13	Official release of Lion version 3.0.1, see milestone 2008-08-11
2008-12-05	A generous offer from our IT provider, IP Exchange GmbH, has enabled us to set up a second location in Nuremberg to which we have moved some of the servers that were previously located in Munich. This reduces the likelihood of a service outage to a minimum.
2008-10/11	Within a short period autumn proves that it can also do sunshine and not just mist and fog - at least metaphorically speaking as regards dictionary queries:    20 Oct.:  The German-Spanish dictionary for the first time records over 1 million queries per day.    4 Nov.:  The German-English dictionary for the first time records more than 12 million queries per day.    17 Nov.:  The German-French dictionary for the first time records over 2 million queries per day. Other figures also show positive development. At the moment, the daily statistics looks as follows: up to 800 new forum threads are started per day users post up to 5,000 follow-ups to existing discussions around 550 new members register for our forums and/or language trainer (14 days after the start of the latest version of the language trainer the number of new registrations was even as high as 1,750) around 4,000 users per day log on to work with the forums and/or trainer
2008-10-30	After lengthy preparatory work we have finally put the finishing touches on the new language trainer which has now been officially released. Über den Leistungsumfang des früheren Vokabeltrainers hinaus können sich Nutzer zu Lerngruppen zusammenschließen, neben dem Vokabellernen können Übungen erstellt, zu Lektionen zusammengefasst und allgemein bzw. in Lerngruppen geübt werden. Durch den Einsatz der Sprachsoftware Voice Reader der Linguatec GmbH können sich unsere Nutzer Übungstexte vorlesen lassen.
2008-10-02	The PDA version of our site is now also available for German-Italian and German-Chinese.
2008-09-15	Xiomara Molina Romero joins the team to support Mercè Escoda with the German-Spanish dictionary.
2008-08-28	Aus den ursprünglichen 83.000 Einträgen des Deutsch-Italienisch-Wörterbuchs sind nunmehr über 100.000 geworden - innerhalb von knapp fünf Monaten hat sich Deutsch-Italienisch zu einem vollwertigen LEO-Wörterbuch gemausert (-:
2008-08-11	Mit dem heutigen Tag steht die Version 3.0 von Lion zur Verfügung. Wesentliche Erweiterungen betreffen die Unterstützung des Deutsch-Italienisch-Wörterbuchs und von Windows Vista. Erfreulich für unsere Privatnutzer: Wir bieten die neue Vollversion kostenlos an (von Firmenkunden erheben wir weiterhin eine Sharewaregebühr).
2008-04-03	Zwei Jahre, nachdem die LEO-GmbH den Wörterbuchservice übernommen hat, können wir mit Deutsch-Italienisch und Deutsch-Chinesisch die Wörterbücher Nummer vier und fünf zur Verfügung stellen. Mit Chinesisch verlässt LEO erstmals den mitteleuropäischen Sprachraum und alphabetische Schriftsysteme.
2008-01-25	Optimierung des Cursorverhaltens (wo sinnvoll, muss der Cursor nicht mehr in das Eingabefeld gesetzt werden) und Aktualisierung der FAQ-Seiten.
2007-12-19	Idiomatic French: After extensive groundwork, we are are finally able to complement our French Dictionary with a Guide to idiomatic usage in French.
2007-12-06	New language trainer enters crucial test phase: The language trainer is no longer just a tool for vocabulary learning, it also enables users to learn in a group and create their own language exercises and a whole range of other things. Since the technical implementation is rather complex, we are once more relying on feedback from our users. The language trainer replaces the previous vocabulary trainer.
2007-12-01	The French dictionary loses its voice: Nathalie Maupetit's voice will be needed by her family in the forseeable future - this puts the pronunciation recordings for the French dictionary on hold.
2007-11-15	English pronunciation: In David Gough we have found a speaker for our English dictionary with a very British pronunciation. Apart from the sound files for American English on Merriam-Webster, which require several clicks via the i-links, we are now also offering sound files for British English on our own site.
2007-10-15	LEO is now also available via 'leo.de': Thanks to the generous offer of Carl Zeiss AG to transfer ownership of the domain leo.de to LEO, our users may now also access our services via this domain.
2007-10-09	New record queries: The German-English dictionary for the first time recorded over 10 million queries in one day.
2007-09-01	New hosting: We have recently changed hosts and our service components (servers, load balancers) are now co-located by IP Exchange GmbH in the heart of Munich. Amongst other things, this helped to increase reliability of our service.
2007-08-31	New editorial staff for German-French dictionary: We are sad to say goodbye to Michaela Scherer who is leaving our team and with it the French dictionary which grew under her loving care for three and a half years. Fabienne Campariol and Justine Ackermann are two highly competent successors who will no doubt accompany the French dictionary into an exciting future.
2007-03-20	German-Spanish dictionary breaks 500,000 barrier: The German-Spanish dictionary takes its first big hurdle only half a year after being launched.
2007-03-15	DWDS: The Digitale Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache des 20. Jh. has launched a new version benefitting from a considerable rise in entries and a more user-friendly layout. The dictionary provides definitions and context information for German terms.
2007-03-13	LEO teams up with RAE: With the kind permission of Real Academia Española, users of our German-Spanish dictionary can now look up definitions for a number of Spanish entries.
2007-03-01	Work starts on German-Italian: March sees new team member Luca Melchior start work on a German-Italian dictionary. Preparations are likely to take at least until the end of 2007.
2007-02-18	French pronunciation: In a first attempt at providing our own pronunciation solution, we have started recording French entries in the German-French dictionary (voice: Nathalie Maupetit). All verbs are completed, all other parts of speech are currently being processed.
2006-12-01	More editorial staff for Chinese: The Chinese-German dictionary, still in its infancy, is getting Chinese native speaker help from Ran Li after the first issues regarding content and technical implementation were resolved.
2006-11-13	Total queries exceed 10,000,000 : Almost 8,500,000 queries in the German-English, 1,100,000 in the German-French and just over 400,000 in the German-Spanish dictionary take the number of total queries to over 10,000,000. More figures: 400 new discussions on 13 November, 18,500 new registrations (nicks) for the forums within just over a month, over 2,000 users per day logging into the vocabulary trainer and more than 6,000,000 word pairs saved in the personal sections of the vocabulary trainer are proof of the fact that our services are getting more and more popular also beyond the dictionary core business.
2006-11-06	German-French dictionary records over 1,000,000 queries: In its first days after the launch in mid-February 2004, the dictionary recorded 20,000 queries a day; about a year later, on 31 May 05, the figure had climbed to over 500,000 to continue its upward trend to finally reach another golden milestone at 1,000,000. :-)
2006-10-03	New forums: Performance issues made a complete redevelopment of the forums necessary (Fabian Riethmayer). Apart from new technology, new features have been put in place, including optional registration to post under a unique login, captchas for non-registered users to combat spam, and new forum sections.
2006-08-03	New servers for the dictionaries: three Sun X4100 servers replace the previously rented servers; a Foundry load balancer assigns queries to the three servers to balance the work load. With this we ensure that the dictionaries are running on powerful and stable hardware.
2006-05-01	Preparatory work starts for German-Chinese: Richard Teschke joins the team on 1 May to deal with all the nitty-gritty involved in integrating our first non-Central European language.
2006-04-01	German-Spanish dictionary goes live: Thanks to the hard work and dedication of Mercè Escoda, a third dictionary goes live at the same time as the newly formed LEO GmbH takes up business. The German-Spanish dictionary starts with 95,000 entries. New vocabulary trainer: Also, a new version of the vocabulary trainer is now available. The developer, Fabian Riethmayer, has redesigned the trainer to include better technology and provide a wider range of functions. New link icons: The previous collection of individual icons for the different links to external sites (grammar, spelling, pronunciation, etc.) is replaced by one single link.
2006-04-01	LEO GmbH takes over dictionary-related services: An independent LEO GmbH has been formed to unleash the full growth potential of the dictionary-related services which was not possible within the university setting. The team as well as the idea of providing a free resource for everybody remains unchanged.

Milestones 1995-2005

2005-Jan/Apr	Ain't no record high enough 20 January: dictionary queries break the 5,200,000 barrier 15 February: dictionary queries break the 5,300,000 barrier 16 February: dictionary queries break the 5,400,000 barrier 19 April: dictionary queries break the 5,500,000 barrier 20 April: dictionary queries break the 5,600,000 barrier
2005-04-14	Lion back online After a period of developing, fine-tuning and integrating, Lion is available for download as shareware. Lion now supports all LEO dictionaries and allows users to replace words in MS Office documents with translations suggested in our results table with one click. Lion is distributed together with Th. Schleinzer, the developer of Lion, and BFS finance Ltd.
2005-01-12	Dictionary records over 5,000,000 queries The increase in queries continues unabated: within three months, LEO records a rise in queries of 1,000,000. Today, our users looked up over 5,000,000 words in the dictionary with page views weighing in at around 6,000,000.
2004-Oct/Nov	Up, up and away... 13 October: dictionary queries break the 4,200,000 barrier 19 October: dictionary queries break the 4,300,000 barrier 3 November: dictionary queries break the 4,400,000 barrier 8 November: dictionary queries break the 4,700,000 barrier (the 4,500,00 and 4,600,000 hurdles are taken on the following two days) 23 November: dictionary queries break the 4,800,000 barrier
2004-10-08	New dictionary software goes live The new dictionary software comes complete with new design and includes the following changes: all services (dictionaries, forums, vocabulary trainers) are now located under the same URL; navigation bar; end of test phase for English vocabulary trainer and start of French vocabulary trainer; standardised linking of active and archived forum articles; improved solutions for dictionary integration in major browsers.
2004-10-01	Online access for PDAs As of today, a small-screen version of our service is available on 'pda.leo.org'. It was specifically designed to meet the needs of users accessing LEO on handheld devices, ensuring minimal horizontal scrolling.
2004-09-21	New records for German-English and German-French dictionary Less than a year after breaking the 3,000,000 mark, the German-English dictionary counts a remarkable 4,000,000 queries (and just under 5,000,000 page views.) Five minutes later, and six months after its inauguration, the German-French dictionary breaks the more humble but nonetheless noteworthy record of 200,000 queries per day.
2004-09-14	dictionary queries break the 3,900,000 barrier
2004-09-13	dictionary queries break the 3,800,000 barrier
2004-08-25	New dictionary version enters test phase The new dictionary software is put to the test by our forum members.
2004-08-24	More than 400,000 dictionary entries Mainly thanks to Verena's unwavering dedication, the German-English dictionary now counts more than 400,000 (symmetrical) entries. This corresponds to more than 800,000 entries in conventional dictionaries.
2004-04-26	3,700,000 dictionary queries
2004-04-01	Doris Leibold joins the team. Her main responsibilities are the revision of forum and dictionary structures as well as the evaluation of forum discussions.
2004-01-14	First day with more than 3,400,000 queries
2004-01-09	The vocabulary trainer is launched on a test server; for the first time in the history of the dictionary project, users are required to give personal details so that we can assign personal vocabulary pools to them.
2004-01-01	Michaela Scherer joins the team. She is in charge of developing and maintaining the German-French dictionary.
2003-12-15	LEO sets to work on the German-French dictionary. Thanks to cooperation with Leinhäuser und Partner Fachübersetzungen, we will be able to launch the dictionary with approx. 130,000 entries.
2003-11-10	First day with over 3,300,000 queries
2003-11-10	Dictionary queries via Short Messaging Service are made possible through cooperation with burdawireless-GmbH. In addition to the browser version, the dictionary's software dictQuery now also delivers results in a reduced version suitable for small display devices. - Special thanks to Nils Reimelt who, on the part of burdawireless-GmbH, contributed enormously towards the realisation of this service.
2003-11-04	First day with over 3,200,000 queries
2003-10-21	Integration of German pronunciation as a result of cooperation with ATIP-GmbH - many thanks to Fred Englert for promoting the technical implementation on the part of ATIP-GmbH. The synthesised voice is based on the PROSER/ATIP-Software and MBROLA.
2003-10-01 – 2003-12-31	LEO sponsors Perspektive-Deutschland, the "largest socio-political online survey in the world".
2003-10-15	First day with over 3,100,000 queries
2003-10-14	First day with over 3,000,000 queries - within a year of reaching 2 million!
2003-10-07	First day with over 2,900,000 queries
2003-05-14	LEO provides links to definitions of German words by integrating the Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache run by the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
2003-05-13	First day with over 2,800,000 queries - three hundred thousand steps within a week!
2003-05-12	First day with over 2,700,000 queries
2003-05-06	First day with over 2,600,000 queries
2003-03-18	New version of dictQuery features categorisation of results and 'more' function; spelling tolerance now displays links to forum discussions containing the search term.
2003-03-12	First day with more than 2,500,000 queries :-)
2003-02-12	First day with more than 2,400,000 queries
2003-02-10	Spelling Tolerance: single link per expression instead of linking of single words in results; 'Other helpers' expanded to include links to useful discussions in the forum.
2003-01-15	First step in revising Forum and Archive: discussions older than three months are moved to the archive, redesign of archive including access to articles by key word and start date.
2003-01-15	Just one day after the 2,2 million were reached: First day with more than 2,3 million queries!
2003-01-14	First day with more than 2,200,000 queries
2003-01-13	Improvement of spelling tolerance to comprise multiple vowels and consonants; use of dynamic hashing to optimise response time
2002-11-19	Additional information on 'Phrasal Verbs' added in cooperation with Englishpage.com
2002-11-12	First day with more than 2,100,000 queries
2002-10-23	First day with more than 2,000,000 queries
2002-10-21	Launch of 'dictQuery' on a SUN Blade 1000, dual processor 750 Mhz, with 2GB RAM
2002-10-15	First day with more than 1,900,000 queries
2002-09-20	Additional information on pronunciation, definitions and etymology of English words added in cooperation with Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary
2002-09-17 – 2002-10-21	Implementation and testing of 'dictQuery' on a multi-processor machine, since the previous server had come to its limits with 65 queries per second during peak times.
2002-09-17	First day with more than 1,800,000 queries
2002-09-04	First day with more than 1,700,000 queries
2002-07-17	New version of the dictionary featuring weighting of results, spelling and special characters tolerance and further links.
2002-05-23	New version of the forum with optimized performance and new sorting functions for forum articles.
2002-05-16	Grouping of all dictionary tools in one central sidebar option, replacing the former point "Bookmarklet".
2002-04-27	Redesign of statistics graphs using PHP to eliminate Browser-dependent inconsistencies of the first draft.
2002-04-24	First day with more than 1,600,000 queries
2002-04-09	First day with more than 1,500,000 queries
2002-04-08	The dictionary has grown to comprise 300,000 entries, equalling 600,000 headwords in both translation directions.
2002-02/2002-03	Integration of dictionary search in all relevant browsers, integration in Windows via LION
2002-02-19	First day with more than 1,400,000 queries
2002-01-30	Integration of dictionary search form in Netscape and Mozilla sidebar
2002-01-21	First day with more than 1,300,000 queries
2002-01-09	Palmtop users can now access the dictionary with WebToGo
2001-11-27	First day with more than 1,200,000 queries
2001-11-06	First day with more than 1,100,000 queries
2001-09-24	Katrina Moorwood joins the dictionary team
2001-09-19	Establishment of a Forum for discussing unsolved queries and difficult translations, as well as general questions concerning linguistics and the dictionary
2001-09-12	First day with more than 1,000,000 queries - click here for details
2001-08-21	First day with more than 900,000 queries
2001-07-01	New, shorter encoding of hyperlinks enables linked results as default option
2001-05-21	Launch of the new version of dictQuery, offering linked results and German Morphology; revision of the various dictionary pages
2001-05-15	First day with more than 800,000 queries
2001-04-10	First day with more than 700,000 queries
2001-04-01	Translator Verena Nutzinger joins our team
2001-01-23	First day with more than 600,000 queries
2000-11-28	First day with more than 500,000 queries
2000-10-24	Redesigning of the dictionary pages and scripts
2000-10-17	Andreas Paul provides the statistics page for the dictionary
2000-09-12	First day with more than 400,000 queries
2000-07-13	Quitted all mirror sites with regard to own spectacular performance (more than 320,000 hits per day)
2000-06-27	First day with more than 300,000 queries
2000-05-15	The vocabulary is now revised by our experts Vanessa Dennig (till 01-01-31), Sybille Frank, Irina Maximtscheva and Verena Nutzinger (till 01-03-31, now permanently working on the dictionary).
2000-04-15	Suspension of the WAP interface until upgrade of dictQuery to multi protocol functionality
2000-02-08	New dictionary server dictQuery fully installed: fast search engine providing German Umlaut output
2000-01-10	Beta testing of dictQuery
1999-12-17	Elmar Bartel is developing and testing a new dictionary server (dictQuery)
1999-12-01	E-Mail interface switched off.
1999-11-03	WAP-Interface (beta) installed for a temporary test
1999-02-01	The dictionary runs on a new 2-processor SUN machine
1997-06-16	An email interface provides access to the database via electronic mail.
1997-05-22	Marc Sihling looks up vocabulary requests and maintains the list of unresolved queries.
1997-04-24	New mirror Servus providing LEO English<->German Dictionary in adjoining Austria
1997-02-27	Creation of this about-page of LEO English<->German Dictionary.
1997-02-00	Now there is another mirror site: i-Connect
1997-02-03	Browse now the Collection of Dictionaries especially for other languages than German<->English, maintained by Mike Gendreyzig. (No longer available)
1997-01-00	Got new server for faster access.
1997-01-08	Stephan Haslbeck is now taking care of the 200-word-lists.
1996-03-29	Added a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
1996-02-14	Mirror site rises at travlang in USA.
1996-12-01	Mike Gendreyzig maintains the contributions and requests of vocabularies.
1995-10-01	The dictionary is now maintained by Peter Kai Wimmer.
1995-09-19	A guest-book is established.
1995-08-05	First run of our dictionary service by Achim Jung.