History of Adobe: Birth and PostScript
The company we all grew up working with. The company that defined graphic design as we see today. Adobe Systems Inc.
The multibillion-dollar company whose vision is to “help customers transform their communications into engaging experiences” has been doing exactly that since 1982, after Adobe founders, John Warnock and Charles Geschke, gave up hope working at Xerox Corp.
On Adobe’s 35th anniversary, we look back at the company’s history with this multi-part series, it’s journey from being incepted in a garage to creating the most powerful computer language of its time and finally grossing $1bn in sales, 17 years later.
ORIGIN
An alumnus of the University of Utah, John Warnock started off as a graphics researcher at Xerox Corp. where co-founder Charles Geschke headed the Imaging Sciences Laboratory.
During their time at Xerox, Warnock and Geschke created a page description language (PDL) when they understood the potential of a graphics computer language going commercial and pitched the idea to the corporate heads at Xerox.
Page Description Language is a computer language that communicates with a printer to describe the image of the page to be printed in a higher level. Unable to convince Xerox of the same, in 1982 the two quit their jobs to start their own independent PDL business.
In an article, a few years later, Warnock described working with Xerox discouraging because of their inability to move their products past the research state. It was then in Warnock’s garage that they together found Adobe Systems Inc. The name of the company was inspired the from Adobe Creek in California that ran behind Warnock’s house. The very famous stylised “A” of Adobe was designed by Warnock’s graphic designer wife, Marva Warnock.
POSTSCRIPT
Adobe’s first product was a graphic language, PostScript. This language managed to become the most powerful computer language that communicated with the printer to print graphic-styled pages at home.
The language was an instant success with computer manufacturers, advertising agencies and film recorders. After a feature article in Los Angeles Times, by 1986, PostScript had developed over 5,000 applications that made it compatible with every operating system.
FIRST IN THE SILICON VALLEY
LaserWriter, the laser printer from Apple Inc. became the first of its kind to incorporate PostScript. This move enhanced the desktop publishing revolution that began during the 1980’s.
Apple Inc. founder, Steve Jobs offered Warnock and Geschke $5 million for Adobe which the Adobe founders countered by offering Jobs a 19% share at Adobe. The deal was finalised with Jobs paying, along with the share amount, five-year license fees for PostScript. This million-dollar deal made Adobe the first company in the history of Silicon Valley to gain profits in its first year of inception. And Adobe had arrived.
EXTENSION OF POSTSCRIPT
PostScript had managed to get sales worth $1.9 million in 1985. It’s applicational development that made it compatible with every hardware configuration only made the numbers grow. It was a language that was above and beyond any other printer language available at the time. Laser printers had the ability to print both graphics and text on the same page, unlike its predecessors, the plotters and the dot-matrix. Adobe found a way to exploit this ability with PostScript.
The printing revolution that began with PostScript was adopted by corporate giants, like IBM, independent market vendors and even the US Government.
PostScript was released in 3 versions:
- PostScript Level 1: The initial PostScript language.
- PostScript Level 2: It came with certain improvements that made PostScript faster and more reliable. One of the more important features introduced in Level 2 was image decompression which made PostScript be the only program to support JPEG image.
- PostScript Level 3: This enhanced version of the language included thousands of new shades of colours as compared to its predecessor that included just a few hundreds. Launched in 1997, Level 3 also came out with new filters and smooth shading operations.
FALL OF POSTSCRIPT
Despite being expensive, PostScript enjoyed a lot of success in its time. The cost of manufacturing printers was relatively high in the 1980’s and 90’s and the addition of an expensive program didn’t affect the manufacturers that much.
But with the advancement of technology, cost of manufacturing laser printers gradually declined. This made the cost difference between manufacturing the laser printer and PostScript comparatively large. And eventually, with the invention of inkjet printers, the laser printers became obsolete.
Inkjet printers did not require an additional program language. By 2001, the only printers using PostScript were the lower-end models. Computers had found more economical ways of adding graphics to their prints.
The use of PostScript declined in the 21st century but the PostScript processor was still used in high-end printers because of its ability to reduce the load on the CPU.
SUCCESSOR TO POSTSCRIPT
PostScript was the first successful venture of Adobe. After its fall, it wasn’t a surprise that Adobe came up with its successor, the Portable Document Format, commonly known as the PDF.
Be sure to check out the upcoming parts of this article to know about the PDF and other Adobe products that redefined graphic design.
This is Part 1 of 4 in series of articles, where we trace the journey of Adobe as a company and celebrate 35 Years of Adobe.
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