Adobe

Adobe releases Adobe Illustrator and establishes an international presence through its European subsidiary. Adobe introduces InDesign, a professional publishing software package. Sales surpass $1 billion for the first time. Adobe Systems Inc. is a leading developer of desktop publishing software. Sales of three of the company's software products--Photoshop, Illustrator, and PageMaker&mdashcount for about 50 percent of Adobe's sales. Adobe also developed and distributes, free of charge, Acrobat Reader, which allows Internet users to view and print portable document format (PDF) files. The company has investments in about 20 technology companies and is involved in two venture capital partnerships. Adobe also sells print technology to original equipment manufacturers; the company's PostScript page description language became the industry standard for the imaging and printing of electronic documents. Shortly after it was launched, Adobe introduced PostScript, a powerful computer language that essentially described to a printer or other output device the appearance of an electronic page, including the placement of characters, lines, or images. The introduction of PostScript proved integral to the desktop publishing revolution. With a personal computer and a laser printer equipped with PostScript, users could produce polished, professional-looking documents with high-quality graphics. An article in a 1989 issue of the Los Angeles Times stated that Adobe's PostScript 'made desktop publishing possible by enabling laser printers, typesetting equipment and other such devices to produce pages integrating text and graphics.' Advertising agencies, in particular, soon found the new technology indispensable. Realizing the wealth of potential uses for the PostScript language, Adobe marketed and licensed PostScript to manufacturers of computers, printers, imagesetters, and film recorders. In 1985, Apple Computer, Inc., maker of the MacIntosh computer, incorporated PostScript for its LaserWriter printer. Shortly thereafter, Apple invested in a 19 percent stake in Adobe, which had reported revenues of $1.7 million the year before. Adobe's rapid growth led to an increase in staff from 27 in 1985 to 54 by 1986. More than 5,000 PostScript applications were developed and made available for every operating system and hardware configuration. In 1986, Adobe signed an agreement to supply Texas Instruments Inc. with the software for two of its laser printers, producing the first PostScript-equipped printers made for use with IBM-compatible personal computers. In addition, PostScript soon became available for use with minicomputers and mainframes, and it remained the only page description language available for multiple-computer environments, such as corporate office networks. Independent software vendors marketed products that used PostScript to render images and text onto film, slides, and screens, for less money than traditional typesetting methods incurred. Used by corporations, professional publishers, and the U.S. government, PostScript rapidly became one of the most ubiquitous computer languages worldwide. The strategy of marketing and licensing technology to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Apple became the cornerstone of Adobe's success. In 1986 Apple accounted for 80 percent of Adobe's sales, and the other 20 percent was composed of retail sales, an area into which Adobe moved the following year. In 1987 the company introduced the Adobe Illustrator, a design and illustration software program. Enabling users to create high-quality line drawings, the Illustrator became popular among graphic designers, desktop publishers, and technical illustrators. The company also released the Adobe Type Library, which contained a large selection of type fonts, many of which were original typefaces Adobe had created especially for the electronic medium. The Type Library eventually would become the most widely used collection in the industry.