The Origins of the High-Z Supernova Search Team and the Discovery of the Accelerating Universe

The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), and specifically its southern hemisphere facility the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), now both part of NSF’s NOIRLab, played a key role in the discovery of the accelerating Universe. On the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the publications that announced this unexpected finding, we discuss the role our High-z Supernova Search Team and CTIO played in this startling discovery.