Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: Stuff looks dot com. Well look at that. You're back
Speaker 1: again for another episode of tech Stuff. My name is
Speaker 1: Chris Poulette and I am an editor at how Stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Sitting across from me, as is typical,
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. He there, so today I
Speaker 1: thought we would chat a bit. Uh, We're gonna do
Speaker 1: another one of our infamous two part episodes about a company.
Speaker 1: In this case, we're talking about the company Adobe. Yes,
Speaker 1: we Uh, we've had people ask us about specific Adobe
Speaker 1: products in the past, or products that used to be
Speaker 1: owned by somebody else who that are now owned by Adobe.
Speaker 1: And uh, we were talking about what we wanted to
Speaker 1: do this week, and I think we wanted to. We
Speaker 1: decided that we were going to try this adventure. And
Speaker 1: it is an adventure because there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: for a company that's that's not as old as some
Speaker 1: of the others we've talked about, like IBM, for example,
Speaker 1: HP General at Trick. You know these companies that have
Speaker 1: century long histories. In this case, we're talking about a
Speaker 1: company that was that was originally founded in nine two.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, First of all, we
Speaker 1: should probably mention if you're not familiar with Adobe overall,
Speaker 1: really what their focus was early early on, It was
Speaker 1: all about, uh, the digital information you see on a display,
Speaker 1: how do you replicate that reliably into things like a
Speaker 1: hard copy format? You know, things like if you have
Speaker 1: a certain font showing up on the screen, how can
Speaker 1: you create some software that will allow you to make
Speaker 1: that font translate over into say a hard copy form
Speaker 1: like on a printer, Or just how you create new
Speaker 1: types of fonts so that you aren't limited to a
Speaker 1: single set of characters when you are creating documents for
Speaker 1: the digital formats, because I mean, you don't want everything
Speaker 1: to look exactly the same in uniformly. You want to
Speaker 1: personalize stuff as much as you can and customize it.
Speaker 1: So that was really what the Adobe founders were thinking about.
Speaker 1: Those founders were John Warnock and Charles Gesh. That's right. Um.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, this this whole thing, um,
Speaker 1: you may be thinking of as sort of a a
Speaker 1: PC type thing. I mean, Um, the technology we're talking
Speaker 1: about here led to the popularity of desktop publishing, but
Speaker 1: the the seeds of this technology were planted quite a
Speaker 1: bit before. Um, PCs ended up on every desktop in
Speaker 1: you know, the corporate world and on on our uh
Speaker 1: laptops at home and all the other stuff. Um. It
Speaker 1: really started in in the late nineties seventies at a
Speaker 1: completely different company that that you probably have heard of before,
Speaker 1: with the next at the beginning and the next at
Speaker 1: the end, Xerox. UM. Xerox was known for being a
Speaker 1: technological leader, but they liked to keep their technologies to themselves.
Speaker 1: And we we've talked in the past about Apple, they're
Speaker 1: they're quote unquote famous for having their their graphical user interface,
Speaker 1: the Gooey stolen quote unquote allegedly from Zerox from Xerox
Speaker 1: in their Palo Alto Research center by by uh well
Speaker 1: actually various people who came in to see it, and
Speaker 1: among those being Steve Jobs. I know there were others
Speaker 1: from other companies. Well, I mean Steve Jobs has you
Speaker 1: know he was famous for saying at one point during
Speaker 1: an interview that you know, good artists copy great art
Speaker 1: steel and this was sort of kind of part of
Speaker 1: what he was talking about, you know, the graphic user
Speaker 1: interface and even the mouse. Where technologies developed at this
Speaker 1: Palo Alto research center or park. That's the Xerox Park.
Speaker 1: It's it's a famous, famous research center because so many
Speaker 1: different technologies that we use today got their start in
Speaker 1: this research center, and UH, either through licensing or outright theft,
Speaker 1: have finally made their way to the general public. WHOA, whoa, WHOA.
Speaker 1: Hold on a minute there, Jonathan. Okay, So when I
Speaker 1: said that, I was really not thinking clearly. Xerox Park
Speaker 1: did refine and helped popularize things like the computer mouse
Speaker 1: and the graphic user interface, but in fact those were
Speaker 1: not invented at Xerox Park. A man by the name
Speaker 1: of Douglas Ingelbart first got those those concepts moving in
Speaker 1: the early sixties, and it would be a decade later
Speaker 1: when Xerox would really take advantage of them. So I
Speaker 1: just wanted to correct that before all of you send
Speaker 1: all your emails. Ever, Yeah, it's it's um, it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. We should we should eventually do an episode
Speaker 1: on on this group of people, because feeling would be
Speaker 1: at least two. But yes, I agree, But because they
Speaker 1: came up with so much and and that's in fact
Speaker 1: how Warnock and Gesh met they were working on UH
Speaker 1: technologies that would I would work with both bitmapped graphics
Speaker 1: and uh well graphics and fonts together. UM. Two of
Speaker 1: these these technologies were called JAM, which is capital J
Speaker 1: a capital M and interpress UM and Xerox actually decided
Speaker 1: they were going to use uh interpress as their own standard,
Speaker 1: but they refused to license it to other people. And well,
Speaker 1: you know, they was they were holding it close to
Speaker 1: their vest if you will pardon the gaming um symbolism there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were. They were really they wanted to keep it
Speaker 1: to themselves. And and both GESHK and WARNOCKX saw that
Speaker 1: something like this could could really help other people, and
Speaker 1: they decided to uh to make a go of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in nineteen two they go and found Adobe system
Speaker 1: Well then it was just Adobe. So they found a
Speaker 1: company called Adobe. They secured two and a half million
Speaker 1: dollars in seed money from hembrecton Quist. So they get
Speaker 1: this money that to found the company. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: was you saw where it was named what it was
Speaker 1: named after? Adobe? It was named after a creek that
Speaker 1: ran through warnox backyard in Los Altos, California. They had
Speaker 1: at that time, they had no physical office space in
Speaker 1: two What they did have were two employees, just Warnock
Speaker 1: and ges and zero dollars in revenue. Uh and uh
Speaker 1: Warnox wife Marva designed the first Adobe logo. Now that
Speaker 1: is not the same logo that Adobe uses today. They've
Speaker 1: actually revised that logo a couple of times. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll mention it as it happens when we work
Speaker 1: our way through the timeline. But yes, it was John
Speaker 1: Warnock wife who designed the very first one. And um
Speaker 1: so wait wait she was a designer. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out, you know, well, what the whole company
Speaker 1: was about originally original was how to reproduce, how to
Speaker 1: accurately reproduce if I can splin infinitive, uh, the uh,
Speaker 1: the digital text and graphics you would see on the
Speaker 1: screen onto paper. That was the original focus of this company. Now,
Speaker 1: since then, it has diversified quite a bit, although not
Speaker 1: as not as much as some other companies you can
Speaker 1: think of, Like there are technology companies out there that
Speaker 1: have diversified so much that there are if you were
Speaker 1: to look at two different branches of that company, it
Speaker 1: would be very hard to draw any similarities between the two.
Speaker 1: Like we we've talked about some of these companies that
Speaker 1: got so big and so complex that you know, it
Speaker 1: was almost like you're talking about completely different companies when
Speaker 1: you're talking about different divisions that that's not exactly true
Speaker 1: with Adobe. You mean like like ge makes, you know,
Speaker 1: toaster ovens and jet engines. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good example. Um and medical technology and guest top printers. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's yeah, They're They're versification has been
Speaker 1: more uh sort of, I don't know how. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like the product lines you see in the store, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've always made chocolate and vanilla flavors,
Speaker 1: but now we're making mango. Yeah. Uh. Their their their
Speaker 1: technologies are very much in the design world, right. So
Speaker 1: then they started to develop a programming language. Technically it's
Speaker 1: a dynamically typed concatinative. Because I can't say these words
Speaker 1: programming language. I can say concatenation, concatenitive, concatenitive. Yeah. It's interesting,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah? Yeah, I'm like I look at them
Speaker 1: like I have never seen this word before, and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to ruin it. Anyway. It's a programming language
Speaker 1: called PostScript, and this sort of forms the foundation for
Speaker 1: the products that Adobe would develop over its early early
Speaker 1: years as a company. So that all happens in a
Speaker 1: D two and in eight three they officially incorporate in
Speaker 1: the state of California. So Adobe becomes an official company
Speaker 1: and they issue their first PostScript license. They also opened
Speaker 1: their first office space in Mountain View, California, which, for
Speaker 1: those of you who are familiar with the technology region
Speaker 1: in California, that's Google's stomping ground these days, a lot
Speaker 1: of people stomping ground. Frankly, yeah, well Google stomps bigger
Speaker 1: than most companies. Uh. And and so they the first
Speaker 1: license for PostScript technology goes to another notable company in
Speaker 1: the technology world, another notable company in the technology work
Speaker 1: world that has a name that begins with a letter A.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, Apple, that is correct, Apples
Speaker 1: the first license of PostScript technology to help to determine
Speaker 1: these the displays fonts and things of that nature on
Speaker 1: Apple computers. Uh. During that year, So this is technically
Speaker 1: the second year of Adobe, but the first year of incorporation.
Speaker 1: The company makes eighty three thousand dollars in revenue and
Speaker 1: they have thirteen employees. So the sky is the limit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, Well, um, if you'll remember, we've talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, of course Steve Jobs many times, but he
Speaker 1: he had done some design work back when he was
Speaker 1: studying in college. He was fascinated with typography, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that he really wanted for the Macintosh computer,
Speaker 1: which if you will remember, launched in UM, was its
Speaker 1: ability to handle fonts. Well, that's thanks in large part
Speaker 1: to Adobe's PostScript technology. Hey, I didn't trip to trip
Speaker 1: over that word. I tripped over trip. Yeah, well we're
Speaker 1: none of us are perfect, but yeah, it's uh. This
Speaker 1: start started a close relationship between Apple and Adobe, which
Speaker 1: which has not always been a smooth relationship, even even
Speaker 1: when even in these early days, because Adobe was sort of,
Speaker 1: for a while the only game in town when it
Speaker 1: came to font technology and font development, and so they
Speaker 1: could kind of depending upon whom you asked. If you
Speaker 1: asked Apple, Apple would say their prices are getting too high.
Speaker 1: You know, we're having to pay uh licensing fees that
Speaker 1: are unreasonably high. And we'll get more into that as
Speaker 1: that relationship develops. But in four this is when, ah,
Speaker 1: that just really starts to come into play because Adobe
Speaker 1: enters into a licensing agreement to develop Type one versions
Speaker 1: of linotype fonts. And this is sort of the basis
Speaker 1: of this this font war between Adobe and Apple, which
Speaker 1: sounds like it's, you know, kind of boring, but it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to me because you're talking about something that's
Speaker 1: fundamental to the way that a computer displays information to
Speaker 1: a user. So it is something that's really really important.
Speaker 1: And if you know, if you do have essentially what
Speaker 1: if what if in effect is a monopoly on that,
Speaker 1: then you hold a lot of power. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like it would be much like it's the
Speaker 1: font what what? What's the big deal? No? No, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. Let let me tell you just as a
Speaker 1: personal anecdote, because you know, eighty four, I was, you know, twelve,
Speaker 1: thirteen years old, um and uh you know, my my
Speaker 1: older brother and if he wanted to do to uh
Speaker 1: type up a paper for class, he got over to
Speaker 1: the typewriter and typed it. And if you wanted fonts,
Speaker 1: you know what, back when we talked about IBM, we
Speaker 1: had a selectric typewriter at home. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: change the funt, you had to change the ball on
Speaker 1: the typewriter. And there those were not super cheap. We
Speaker 1: only had I think maybe two um and they looked
Speaker 1: like you had typed it, you know, and if you
Speaker 1: make a mistake, you know, white out or go back
Speaker 1: over it or type it again. So, uh, my friend,
Speaker 1: I have a friend who who got one of the
Speaker 1: very first Macintosh is and uh we took great delight
Speaker 1: on and typing all the stuff out and all the
Speaker 1: different fonts and printing it out, and it was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's really I mean, that's just so cool. I had
Speaker 1: a printer for my Amiga that I got around the
Speaker 1: same time that had no dessenders um. And for those
Speaker 1: of you who are font people, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. But the G s in this case, uh,
Speaker 1: the lower case G with the thing that hangs below
Speaker 1: the line the baseline of the font um. The G
Speaker 1: was hyped up so that the bottom of the little
Speaker 1: tail on the G was as low as let's say
Speaker 1: the bottom of a B or an H. So it
Speaker 1: looked all wonky. I got I got marked off for
Speaker 1: that in class. But the way the way this was
Speaker 1: done brought just made all this this technology more readily
Speaker 1: available for a lot less than you would find it
Speaker 1: if you wanted something like that pub lished you would
Speaker 1: have to pay a lot of money for it, and
Speaker 1: it was it was a lot of money, but not
Speaker 1: at the same level that you would have if you
Speaker 1: had it done professionally. So making these fonts available, that
Speaker 1: the line of type fonts UM or the I T
Speaker 1: C fonts, the International UM is it Typography Foundation something
Speaker 1: like that. Let me, I'll look for that in a
Speaker 1: second while you're talking. But yeah, UM, because I know,
Speaker 1: I just thought here a second to get where it
Speaker 1: was it UM. But yeah, the I T C fonts
Speaker 1: were you know, those were available to people who were professionals,
Speaker 1: and now all of a sudden, you know, making them
Speaker 1: available to people with the desktop computer for maybe you know,
Speaker 1: two or three thousand dollars. Yeah, you're talking about the
Speaker 1: birth of desktop publishing, which you know suddenly it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to kind of put this into perspective today, but
Speaker 1: you imagine that if you go back far enough, publishing
Speaker 1: something was beyond the means of the average person because
Speaker 1: they just didn't have access to the sort of type
Speaker 1: setting equipment they would need to to create layout and
Speaker 1: and and produce things on their own. So without going
Speaker 1: to some other company and hiring them to do it,
Speaker 1: it was really difficult to do, and this was suddenly
Speaker 1: creating the ability for the average person to get into
Speaker 1: that and that was a very powerful thing. In fact,
Speaker 1: that was one of the one of the main reasons
Speaker 1: why personal computers were really taking off, because not only
Speaker 1: were they being thought of as as an educational tool
Speaker 1: for kids or a gaming device depending on how you
Speaker 1: were looking at it, right, it also became a true
Speaker 1: workstation for people who were into this this publishing arena.
Speaker 1: And that same year they relocated their office to Palo Alto,
Speaker 1: which is stomping grounds for this weekend tech um as
Speaker 1: well as other companies, and their revenues hit two point
Speaker 1: two million dollars and sixty eight percent of that revenue
Speaker 1: came from Apple royalty payments, so Apple royalty payments for
Speaker 1: the PostScript licenses are made up more than half of
Speaker 1: that two point two million dollars in revenue. And at
Speaker 1: that point they had twenty seven employees. So moving up
Speaker 1: to UH eighty five, that's when Adobe actually ships PostScript
Speaker 1: level one, so this is beyond the licensing, they're shipping
Speaker 1: it as a product. And they also did the first
Speaker 1: PostScript printer. Yes, go ahead, So I is the International
Speaker 1: Typeface Corporation, and I apologize it. I had it in
Speaker 1: the back of my head and then I switched pages
Speaker 1: on my notes. It's it's easy for me to get
Speaker 1: those acronyms and and and abbreviations all mixed up to
Speaker 1: But yeah, so still early days. But so in eighty
Speaker 1: four they made two point two million. In eighty five
Speaker 1: they made four point six millions, so they more than
Speaker 1: doubled their revenue. They went from twenty seven employees to
Speaker 1: forty four employees, so they didn't quite double their workforce,
Speaker 1: but they did double their revenue. And they began to
Speaker 1: publish the PostScript Language Reference Manual, which is also known
Speaker 1: as the Red Book. And if you take a look
Speaker 1: at that first publication, that first edition, you'll know why
Speaker 1: it's called the Red Book. It's enormous and it's read,
Speaker 1: so it's a book. Is also a book. So there
Speaker 1: we have the mystery solved. Why it is called the
Speaker 1: Red Book. Is big, it is a book, it is read.
Speaker 1: I can't help it. And so in so four years
Speaker 1: after they've first founded this company, and three years after
Speaker 1: they incorporated, they launched their initial public offering or i
Speaker 1: p O. So this is where Adobe switches over from
Speaker 1: being a privately owned company to a public company, publicly
Speaker 1: traded company, and their opening stock price at that time
Speaker 1: is eleven dollars a share. UH. Since they went public,
Speaker 1: they have had that stock split several times, so they've
Speaker 1: done two for one splits on multiple occasions, so which
Speaker 1: means that you know, they've uh the the value of
Speaker 1: the company has gone up as they have actually doubled
Speaker 1: the number of stocks that were available. UH. At the
Speaker 1: current stock price is, as as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, which is at the end of October two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve, and this is pre trading dollars here,
Speaker 1: thirty three dollars forty cents a share. So you figure
Speaker 1: the stock has multiplied several times since they launched, and
Speaker 1: the price itself has gone up. So the value of
Speaker 1: the company has increased UH dramatically since they went public,
Speaker 1: which you would hope, right it's to say otherwise is
Speaker 1: what we call a bad thing. Anyway, they also had
Speaker 1: their font library hit over one hundred fonts at this time.
Speaker 1: Now since then we're talking about fonts that are there
Speaker 1: are thousands of them, but that was big news back
Speaker 1: in six Well, that's an understatement, but still but I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the Adobe font library in particular, and that's when.
Speaker 1: That's also when another thing with Apple happened, although it
Speaker 1: was not particularly about the licensing. It was a fellow
Speaker 1: who came from Apple. He was a developer on a
Speaker 1: computer called the Leasa Lisa, which we talked about I
Speaker 1: think a couple of times in this podcast in other episodes.
Speaker 1: But the Lisa computer was not what you would call
Speaker 1: a success. But Tom malloy, who worked at Apple, joined
Speaker 1: Adobe and began to design typeface and PostScript products and
Speaker 1: would climb quite high in the executive branch of Adobe.
Speaker 1: Um So that was an interesting development, I thought. Moving
Speaker 1: on to D seven, do you have anything to say
Speaker 1: about six Adobe publishes One of their flagship products in
Speaker 1: the early days anyway, illustrator let it let let people
Speaker 1: create PostScript based graphics. Now, essentially PostScript graphics are line art.
Speaker 1: So when if you've heard our our episode where we
Speaker 1: talked about the different types of graphics computer graphics, line
Speaker 1: art is has some advantages over bitmapped art in the
Speaker 1: specifically when it comes to scaling. So when you change
Speaker 1: the scale of line art, you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about problems with resolution. No, not generally, because vector graphics
Speaker 1: basically that the computer can interpolate, uh you know, the
Speaker 1: starting and ending points of each of the lines and
Speaker 1: the line art. It's all based on math. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, math is what computers compute. Really all it
Speaker 1: all it takes is for it to do that. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're uh, drinking a bitmapped graphic, it's not such
Speaker 1: a problem. The computer just makes uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: decision on which of the pixels it needs to toss
Speaker 1: outing it because because of bitmapped image do so well
Speaker 1: is a collection of pixels, right, So you're think of
Speaker 1: a bitmapped image as a bunch of different dots of
Speaker 1: different colors. And you know, the more dots you have,
Speaker 1: the greater the resolution in general. And if you but
Speaker 1: when you expand a bitmapped picture, you do not get
Speaker 1: more dots to fill in the space between the dots.
Speaker 1: So eventually those dots, the space between the dots gets
Speaker 1: quite large, and that's where you start getting the problems
Speaker 1: with resolution. So that's when we talk about if you
Speaker 1: have a camera with a certain number of megapixels, the
Speaker 1: more megapixels there are in general, that means the larger
Speaker 1: you can you can scale up an image before you
Speaker 1: start encountering problems with resolution in general. There are other
Speaker 1: elements that, of course play very heavily into an image
Speaker 1: is quality, and we've talked about that in our digital
Speaker 1: photograph the episodes. But but that that was one of
Speaker 1: the things that gave artists a new tool, was this
Speaker 1: Illustrator suite of software that would let them create graphics
Speaker 1: within UH. This this PostScript language, and now that the
Speaker 1: PostScript pretty much lived inside printers um at this point
Speaker 1: and according to UH, according to what Adobe has said, UM,
Speaker 1: and the inspiration for Illustrator came from John Warnock watching
Speaker 1: his wife Marva work, and he remembered she was the
Speaker 1: one who who developed the Adobe logo, and so he
Speaker 1: what he was doing was he was watching her her
Speaker 1: draw on paper and said, you know, it would be
Speaker 1: really cool if we could use PostScript to do this,
Speaker 1: to give designers the ability to use a computer to
Speaker 1: work on design, um, you know, and and and make
Speaker 1: this a tool for real designers to do real work. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's that's sort of you know, what was going on.
Speaker 1: An engineer named Mike schuster Um was behind Illustrated. He
Speaker 1: was the one who was assigned the task of making
Speaker 1: this happen UM and uh, you know it it wasn't
Speaker 1: terribly inexpensive. You know, when it was released it was fos.
Speaker 1: But again this is taken in context other other UM
Speaker 1: software that was similar in in uh in its kind
Speaker 1: where you know, it was much more expensive than that.
Speaker 1: So this was it gave people an opportunity to do
Speaker 1: that and to use it the pen tool, which was
Speaker 1: more of an approximation of drawing by hand. Of course,
Speaker 1: at that point, I think most people were using a
Speaker 1: mouse with it than a pen that um. I think
Speaker 1: it was probably a few years later when it became
Speaker 1: more common to use a pen and a tablet to
Speaker 1: do it. But you know, still it was a different
Speaker 1: way to do illustration on a computer, and it was
Speaker 1: it was a popular tool. By this time. The revenues
Speaker 1: for Adobe head hit about thirty nine million, and they
Speaker 1: had a seventy two employees and fort of the revenue
Speaker 1: at this point came from Apple, So Apple playing a
Speaker 1: diminishing role in their overall revenue is still a very
Speaker 1: important one. I mean, thirty nine million is no chump change.
Speaker 1: But at this point they also started to license PostScript
Speaker 1: to companies like little companies with little names like HP
Speaker 1: and IBM. I think I've heard of those guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course IBM at this time was really heavily
Speaker 1: involved in the personal computer realm. They would eventually kind
Speaker 1: of step away from that, but not at the moment.
Speaker 1: And they at this point, Adobe makes another move, so
Speaker 1: they moved from Palo Alto back to Mountain View, California.
Speaker 1: Still not the final move for Adobe, by the way.
Speaker 1: So you know, just gear you guys up for another
Speaker 1: exciting talk about relocating a company. There's something else that
Speaker 1: was happening at the same time. I'm sorry, you were
Speaker 1: going to say something that, well, it might be related
Speaker 1: to that, or you're you're talking about the brothers. Ah, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: are in the same time. In seven, you have a
Speaker 1: PhD student named Thomas Nol and he was working on
Speaker 1: a program. It was a program that would let him
Speaker 1: display gray scale images on a monochromatic screen. Monochromatic meaning
Speaker 1: there's one color represented, but gray scale means that you
Speaker 1: could get different shades of that monochromatic color, which was
Speaker 1: kind of a big deal, right, you know, it was
Speaker 1: it was an advance in display technology. And now we're
Speaker 1: talking about seven. So for people who are used to these,
Speaker 1: you know, super high definition screens, it's kind of an
Speaker 1: unusual thing to think about, but we did not always
Speaker 1: have those. And so he kind of, you know, was
Speaker 1: playing around with this program, and he showed it off
Speaker 1: to his brother John, who worked for a little production
Speaker 1: company UM, a little like effects and production company Industrial
Speaker 1: Light and something something magic. I wonder if he asked
Speaker 1: him if he was sleeping first, Are you sleeping? John? Um?
Speaker 1: Also another fellow with a similar last name. Wait, now
Speaker 1: he was another brother named Glenn. Oh. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know about Glenn. I knew about Thomas and John, but
Speaker 1: they they started to work. John had had recommended to
Speaker 1: Thomas that he look further into this, uh, this program
Speaker 1: he had created, this which he called display um, and
Speaker 1: to develop this software further. And so they began to work,
Speaker 1: the brothers Knoll on this software, and it eventually developed
Speaker 1: into a different program. Uh. They tried to name it.
Speaker 1: I forget what it was. They were trying to name
Speaker 1: it one one. They came up with one name, but
Speaker 1: it was already taken. So they went to their fallback name.
Speaker 1: That fallback name has become something of a a staple
Speaker 1: on the web and and in uh publishing in general.
Speaker 1: That name is but do shop. So photoshop created by
Speaker 1: the brothers Knoll Uh and it was fairly primitive in
Speaker 1: its early days, but you know, it's now become a verb,
Speaker 1: so it's obviously important. Well. Adobe, Adobe took notice of
Speaker 1: this and in they decided to license Photoshop to Illustrator
Speaker 1: as an add on product. And here's another kind of
Speaker 1: funny thing. Adobe didn't really think at that time that
Speaker 1: Photoshop deserved to be a standalone product. They thought of
Speaker 1: it as just simply an add on for Illustrator. They
Speaker 1: didn't think that it would ever be necessarily a revenue generator. Um,
Speaker 1: so they just they just said, are We'll just create
Speaker 1: this as an add on for a product we have
Speaker 1: already published. They would obviously change their minds about that,
Speaker 1: uh in a couple of years. But that was also
Speaker 1: when they produced what was called the font Folio, just
Speaker 1: a hard drive that had the tire font library from
Speaker 1: Adobe stored on it, so you could buy a hard
Speaker 1: drive the head every single font Adobe owned in its library.
Speaker 1: And it cost a paltry nine thousand, six hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: which so in in two thousand eleven dollars, which was
Speaker 1: the latest I could get for a inflation calculator. That's
Speaker 1: about eighteen thousand dollars. That's a princely sum. It was
Speaker 1: a princely sum. It went from paltry to princely in
Speaker 1: one sentence. Really. Um yeah, And and you know they
Speaker 1: weren't they weren't the only ones working on these different
Speaker 1: kinds of technologies. Um. You know I read in an
Speaker 1: interview with a guy named Paul Brainerd, who you may
Speaker 1: or may not have heard of. Jonathan is nodding, I
Speaker 1: have heard of. Um he while while these guys were
Speaker 1: doing these things. Uh, mr Mr Brainerd was you know,
Speaker 1: he came from a newspaper publishing world. Uh. He actually
Speaker 1: was the editor of the University of Minnesota Daily and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, during graduate school while he was working there,
Speaker 1: and he was interested in finding a better way to
Speaker 1: do page layout at the newspaper. And you know, as
Speaker 1: a former newspaper newspaperman myself, I remember, even even with
Speaker 1: the help of computers, having to uh still work on
Speaker 1: doing layout for pages by cutting the pages out and
Speaker 1: pasting them onto the paper to be shot with a camera. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, by hand. You cut him out with an
Speaker 1: exactor knife and stick him on there with hot wax. Uh.
Speaker 1: Kind of a pain in the neck, painting the finger
Speaker 1: if you weren't paying attention. Um. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a better way to do this,
Speaker 1: and so he started a company named Aldus uh name
Speaker 1: for Aldus Minutius, who was sort of a typographer himself
Speaker 1: several centuries before that. UM. Just sort of a keep
Speaker 1: this in the back of your mind. But because he's
Speaker 1: going to come up again in the not too terribly
Speaker 1: distant future, right, which is actually our past. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: just blew your mind. Yeah. Well, he he introduced a
Speaker 1: program called PageMaker, which put him sort of as a
Speaker 1: head to head competitor with Adobe because they were coming
Speaker 1: out with similar kinds of products. They were you know,
Speaker 1: Adobe was doing uh the PostScript for the printers. PageMaker
Speaker 1: was sort of a nice compliment in this particular instance
Speaker 1: because it was able to uh create the pages which
Speaker 1: could use these fonts and would help newspapers and other
Speaker 1: publishing houses take advantage of desktop publishing. Um. But they
Speaker 1: will not they will not always be so complimentary, and
Speaker 1: in fact, they will get really really complimentary in the
Speaker 1: future of our of our discussion and at this the
Speaker 1: same around the same time, this is when Apple and
Speaker 1: even Microsoft began to sort of rebel against Adobe and
Speaker 1: their Type one UH fonts because the the licensing fees
Speaker 1: were getting to be pretty expensive and so um. Eventually,
Speaker 1: what this, what this evolved into, was that Apple and
Speaker 1: Microsoft UH switched too true Type fonts, which was something
Speaker 1: developed by Apple U for both mac os and for Windows.
Speaker 1: So those operating systems began to use Apple's true Type
Speaker 1: as opposed to the Type one fonts from Adobe. That
Speaker 1: won't be the last time that happens. And eventually this actually,
Speaker 1: this actually led to the development of open type, which
Speaker 1: suddenly meant that no one ever had to worry about
Speaker 1: paying huge licensing fees ever again, because now you had
Speaker 1: an open format version of all these font libraries that
Speaker 1: were yeah theoretically, oh your your mileage for the word
Speaker 1: open may vary. Yes. In n Adobe ships a few
Speaker 1: new products. They ship Type Manager one and PostScript Level two,
Speaker 1: and their revenue gets up to about a one million dollars.
Speaker 1: They've got around three eight three employees, so things were
Speaker 1: going fairly strong for this company. And you know this
Speaker 1: look pretty dramatic success story. You know, you look at
Speaker 1: that first year of revenues where it was well, the
Speaker 1: fairst year it was zero, and the second year dollars
Speaker 1: and now they're already up to over a hundred million. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in nine, Adobe held a pre release Photoshop workshop
Speaker 1: called Camp Adobe. Now, at this time they had determined
Speaker 1: that perhaps Photoshop actually could stand on its own as
Speaker 1: a as a a standalone software product. It did not
Speaker 1: necessarily have to be an add on to something else.
Speaker 1: So they held this pre release workshop to kind of
Speaker 1: educate people about Photoshop as well as drum up excitement
Speaker 1: for this product, and then shipped it a little bit
Speaker 1: later in nine. They also shipped Illustrator three that same year,
Speaker 1: and that was the same year where another Adobe employee,
Speaker 1: Luanne Seymour Cohen, tweaked the Adobe logo to make it
Speaker 1: uh so that would it could easily scale to different sizes.
Speaker 1: It was a little um in its original format. It
Speaker 1: was a little more difficult to do that, but she
Speaker 1: made some some tweaks to it to streamline that process.
Speaker 1: And the company was making around a hundred sixty nine
Speaker 1: million by then with five eight employees. Um moving forward.
Speaker 1: Once we hit ninety one, we start getting into the
Speaker 1: era where Adobe has gotten large enough now where they're
Speaker 1: looking around at similar companies that make products that either
Speaker 1: compliment what Adobe area does or overlap what Adobe does.
Speaker 1: And rather than you know, rather than than simply just
Speaker 1: pete or try and create new products. You know, Adobe's
Speaker 1: gotten large enough now where they can actually look into acquisitions,
Speaker 1: and so they acquire a company called Emerald City Software
Speaker 1: and yeah, did you were you off to see the Wizard?
Speaker 1: Now they they designed m font manipulation software. So Adobe
Speaker 1: sweeps them up, and uh, they release a few other
Speaker 1: products like Time Manager, to Photoshop, to h and actually
Speaker 1: at this point Photoshop too. You know, it's just the
Speaker 1: second version. It already begins to outsell Illustrator. So the
Speaker 1: program that had used Photoshop is just an add on
Speaker 1: is now being left behind by the add on. The
Speaker 1: Photoshop is now doing quite well. That's also when Adobe
Speaker 1: launches a software called Premiere, and Premiere is a video
Speaker 1: editing software program. So for video editors out there, they're
Speaker 1: probably very familiar or at least they've heard of Premiere.
Speaker 1: I'm sure most of them have worked in it in
Speaker 1: some capacity. Uh. The original Premiere came out just for Max.
Speaker 1: They were it was not for Windows yet. And in fact,
Speaker 1: this is this is kind of the era where the
Speaker 1: Mac got the reputation. As if you were someone who
Speaker 1: worked in audio or video editing and you had a
Speaker 1: desktop computer and not some specialized, you know, proprietary machine,
Speaker 1: chances are it was a Mac because Max were known
Speaker 1: for their the software support side for this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So this was part of what gave Max that reputation,
Speaker 1: was software like Premiere um. That same year, Warnock writes
Speaker 1: a memo about a project called Camelot. It is a
Speaker 1: silly project, Uh, but Camelot is a code name for
Speaker 1: a product that would really push Adobe into the next
Speaker 1: level of its development. It's a product called Adobe Acrobat.
Speaker 1: So Acrobat, let's talk about. You know, here's one of
Speaker 1: the issues that we have with the whole digital versus
Speaker 1: hard copy formats. Right, if you have a digital format
Speaker 1: and you're trying to put it onto hard copy because
Speaker 1: of displays, you know, the different different resolutions, different sizes
Speaker 1: of displays. Uh, sometimes what you would see on your
Speaker 1: computer would not be what you would get if you
Speaker 1: send it to a printer. You you couldn't end if
Speaker 1: you were to open that same document. Uh, if you
Speaker 1: were to create a document in a in a program
Speaker 1: and then open that same document on another computer, perhaps
Speaker 1: it has a different version of that program, then the
Speaker 1: layouts could change. So let's say that you have a
Speaker 1: publishing software program and your buddy has a later version
Speaker 1: of that same program, and you create this, uh, this
Speaker 1: this really nice layout for a flyer that you wanted
Speaker 1: to to distribute. Send it to your buddy because your
Speaker 1: buddy has access to a really awesome color printer. Your
Speaker 1: buddy opens it up on a newer version of that software.
Speaker 1: But because it's a newer version and there have been
Speaker 1: changes made since the version that you use to create that,
Speaker 1: it might change the layout, and suddenly that awesome flyer
Speaker 1: you made looks really amateurish and it just doesn't look right,
Speaker 1: and it either requires you to create an inferior product
Speaker 1: or to spend even more time fixing problems that shouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: Adobe developed a file format proprietary file format that was
Speaker 1: designed so that once you laid things out in the
Speaker 1: way you want it, that's how it would stay, and
Speaker 1: it was independent of whatever platform you were using, and
Speaker 1: a be Acrobat was sort of the first step towards that.
Speaker 1: It was the portable document file or PDF. And uh,
Speaker 1: PDFs are they're very useful because once you design the
Speaker 1: way the PDF looks, and you said it that way,
Speaker 1: that's how it's gonna look from that point forward, assuming
Speaker 1: you're not you know, going in and opening it up
Speaker 1: and editing it afterward. So Adobe Acrobat was sort of there.
Speaker 1: It was the this this major project that would create
Speaker 1: this PDF file format of eventually and what's interesting is
Speaker 1: that it would eventually become the standard for that kind
Speaker 1: of production file. So at this at this time in
Speaker 1: they hit a revenue of two thirty million, They had
Speaker 1: seven D one employees, and uh, it was it was
Speaker 1: really kind of the yet another launching point for Adobe.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an other point in their history where
Speaker 1: they really started to um to establish themselves as a
Speaker 1: dominant force because you know, the whole font thing was
Speaker 1: starting to slip away from them, but they were able
Speaker 1: to stay on top through the publishing side. Yeah. Now, um,
Speaker 1: back in there were a couple of companies named macro
Speaker 1: mind para coomp an author ware that decided to merge
Speaker 1: and um they basically had been working on a piece
Speaker 1: of software called Director, which was a tool that people
Speaker 1: would use to create an interactive content for information kiosks
Speaker 1: and cd ROM uh, you know, basically cd ROM packaging
Speaker 1: or you know the video that was on the disc itself. UM.
Speaker 1: And they decided to call this company Macromedia. And UH,
Speaker 1: you know, you if you're if you're new to technology,
Speaker 1: you may not necessarily have heard that name. But Adobe
Speaker 1: certainly was aware of this company, especially after the in
Speaker 1: the mid nine nineties, the Worldwide Web started to become
Speaker 1: a place to do stuff, you know, a place for
Speaker 1: people to go and uh, especially for UH. I mean,
Speaker 1: they had several different technologies that competed directly with Adobe products.
Speaker 1: For example, UH Illustrator, which is the vector h illustrating program. UM.
Speaker 1: Macromedia had a Freehand program that was the name of
Speaker 1: the software was Freehand, which was the direct competitor UM
Speaker 1: and of course that was a thorn and Adobe side.
Speaker 1: But what they really wanted to try to accomplish with
Speaker 1: something very much like Macromedia's shock Wave and Flash technologies. UM.
Speaker 1: So this was UM, these these technologies were these these
Speaker 1: companies merged and around the time that Adobe was really
Speaker 1: getting a Foothold and UH in desktop publishing. And during
Speaker 1: this time, UM or after it directly after that, they
Speaker 1: had made a name for themselves for all these different
Speaker 1: photoshop and illustrator software like that. UM. So suddenly, you know,
Speaker 1: Adobe finds itself faced with a very capable competitor UM,
Speaker 1: and especially for the web. They also came up with
Speaker 1: another tool UM called Fireworks, which I was excited to
Speaker 1: use because I'm no no graphic designer by any stretch
Speaker 1: of the imagination, but UH, I was doing some simple
Speaker 1: banner ads and things that that at that point around
Speaker 1: the time that that came out in UH in the
Speaker 1: mid nine nineties, and UH Fireworks there wasn't anything like
Speaker 1: it for on the Adobe side because it was sort
Speaker 1: of a combination of vector graphics and bitmapped graphics so
Speaker 1: that you could use the tools that you would use
Speaker 1: to to build things. UH you can resize them to
Speaker 1: any any size you needed and then convert it to
Speaker 1: a a raster file for use on the web. So
Speaker 1: if you had to make UM ads for a website
Speaker 1: like I did, and you had to make them in
Speaker 1: multiple sizes like I did, UM, you could turn stuff
Speaker 1: around very very quickly, and so Adobe found itself going,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, these guys are these guys are pretty good? Um,
Speaker 1: and that all started with the merger of those two
Speaker 1: companies in and around around According the information I've got,
Speaker 1: that same year, Adobe acquired non Linear Technologies, which made
Speaker 1: handwriting recognition software, and they also acquired O c R Systems,
Speaker 1: and o c R stands for Optical Character recognition. So
Speaker 1: in both of these cases, you're talking about, uh, companies
Speaker 1: that create software that allow a computer to take one
Speaker 1: form of input and UH interpret that as text. So
Speaker 1: UH that was you know, clearly they were thinking about
Speaker 1: adding onto this whole digital publication model they were they
Speaker 1: were pursuing. That same year, they shipped Adobe Dimensions one,
Speaker 1: which was a three D rendering software, So ah, they
Speaker 1: were really getting into what was considered to be the
Speaker 1: future of publication. UH. They also shipped a product called
Speaker 1: Streamline three, which automated the conversion of bitmapped images into
Speaker 1: PostScript line art. UH. And at that year they were
Speaker 1: making two sixty six million dollars with eight eight seven employees. Now. UM.
Speaker 1: In ninety three, that's when Adobe officially introduced the portable
Speaker 1: document format PDF. That was the same year that A
Speaker 1: a a company called Hummingbird Limited. It's Canadian company that
Speaker 1: produced something called common Ground. The common Ground was exchange
Speaker 1: software that would convert Windows or mac document types into
Speaker 1: a proprietary file format called digital paper. While that might
Speaker 1: sound familiar to you, because that's kind of what the
Speaker 1: p the f foul format is all about. So common
Speaker 1: Ground launched an ad campaign that was anti PDF, anti
Speaker 1: Adobe Acrobat to be specific, and ran all these different
Speaker 1: ads saying that Adobe Acrobat was bad, and then it
Speaker 1: was you know, no one should use it, and it's
Speaker 1: it's going to create a monopoly and all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Um, yeah, they were. They were the to
Speaker 1: use um tech marketing lingo. They were the eight pound guerrilla. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of of graphics and desktop publishing at the time. So
Speaker 1: digital paper if you're not familiar familiar with that term,
Speaker 1: but you are familiar with PDF, I think you can
Speaker 1: see how this battle turned out. Un pound gorillas crush
Speaker 1: either smaller animals. Yes, yes, the the weak guerrilla was
Speaker 1: stomped beneath the andrew pound guerrillas feet. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: the PDF file format did in fact become the industry standard.
Speaker 1: Digital paper did not, And that same year Adobe shipped
Speaker 1: the very first version of Photoshop that was available for Windows,
Speaker 1: which of course was Photoshop two point five. So Windows
Speaker 1: users and Windows users get finally get a chance to
Speaker 1: use Photoshop. Uh, and the Acrobat actually officially ships in
Speaker 1: June of UM also the first version of Premiere, which
Speaker 1: is there again their video editing software for Windows, ships
Speaker 1: that year, so it was Premiere one for Windows, whereas
Speaker 1: Premiere three for Mac came out that same year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it took it took a little while before the Windows
Speaker 1: products um from Adobe caught up to the Mac products
Speaker 1: just in terms of in development, but it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: long before they were basically working on the same version. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again you're talking about, you know, the Mac platform being
Speaker 1: seen as the the destination for video and audio editing
Speaker 1: and even into some extent desktop publishing. It was just
Speaker 1: seen as that that was more of a Mac type
Speaker 1: use case, whereas the PC was more kind of seen
Speaker 1: more as like a spreadsheets and database management that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um. It was an interesting perception which to
Speaker 1: some extent still extends to today. I still know that
Speaker 1: there are I mean, I know plenty of people who
Speaker 1: work in video publishing who have used both Max and
Speaker 1: PCs to create video, but have a ah strong opinion
Speaker 1: about which one is superior, you say that, or at
Speaker 1: least which one they prefer. Uh. So, Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: making three million dollars that year, and they hit nine
Speaker 1: hundred employees. But there's always room for one more. That's
Speaker 1: for my haunted mansion. Peeps. Nice, thank you. So a
Speaker 1: ninety or is a big year, and that's the year
Speaker 1: we're going to conclude this episode of Adobe our story
Speaker 1: about Adobe, because ninety four was when a few things happened.
Speaker 1: One was that Adobe started a venture capital fund called
Speaker 1: Adobe Ventures. Venture capital is all about finding businesses and
Speaker 1: investing in them, uh through self interest. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: not doing it out of some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: because you think you're going to pay off in the
Speaker 1: long run. Right, You're not doing it just because you
Speaker 1: you you have this warm spot in your heart. You're
Speaker 1: doing it because you're thinking, Hey, this business is working
Speaker 1: on something interesting. It had it relates to what we do,
Speaker 1: it would behoove us to invest in this company so
Speaker 1: that perhaps one day they will produce something that we
Speaker 1: can then scoop up and devour. Although they probably don't
Speaker 1: say it like that, uh, They also acquired a company
Speaker 1: called Laser Tools, which is another company that was all
Speaker 1: about scaling different fonts. So Adobe still not out side
Speaker 1: of out of that. And then they merge with that
Speaker 1: company that Chris alluded to earlier, Aldus, which was an
Speaker 1: electronic publishing giant at the time. Yeah, they they really
Speaker 1: developed an opportunity to to fit together well, um with
Speaker 1: their complementary technologies, and I think that that Aldus really
Speaker 1: had a shot at competing with them head on. But
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately they decided to to join up to
Speaker 1: take on the other competitors out there. And one of
Speaker 1: the one of the big employees over at Aldis, his
Speaker 1: name was Bruce Chisen, and Bruce Chisen would become a
Speaker 1: very important person in Adobe. Uh in just a couple
Speaker 1: of years. In fact, he had a sort of meteoric
Speaker 1: rise in the company. UH. And the new company, the
Speaker 1: merged company between Adobe and Aldis, was named Adobe Systems Incorporated. UH.
Speaker 1: It updated that same year, made updates to pretty much
Speaker 1: its entire line of products, and the revenue hit five
Speaker 1: nine millions, So they hit over a half billion dollars
Speaker 1: and had one thousand, five seven employees. Now granted a
Speaker 1: lot of that was due to the acquisition the merger,
Speaker 1: but that kind of sets the stage for part two
Speaker 1: of our story about Adobe, when things really start heating
Speaker 1: up and we get into yet another Adobe Apple spat
Speaker 1: the fonts was just the there was round one. Round
Speaker 1: two is going to take uh focus on a product
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned but that does not yet belong to Adobe.
Speaker 1: So stay tuned. You can find out more. And if
Speaker 1: you guys have any suggestions for episodes that we should
Speaker 1: cover here on tech Stuff, you should let us know
Speaker 1: because otherwise we're just gonna guess. But if you let
Speaker 1: us know, you can sess an email. Are at just
Speaker 1: this tech Stuff at Discovery dot com or less know
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter are handled there as tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W and Chris and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again about Adobe as it turns out really soon for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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