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Adobe PostScript

Adobe PostScript

Image creditAll About Apple museum (Museo Apple)
CC BY-SA 2.5 IT

Adobe PostScript

Year
1984
Creator
John Warnock, Charles Geschke
Company
Adobe Systems
Location

Description

PostScript is a page description language that tells a printer how to draw the text, shapes, and images of a page. It is a full programming language, and the printer shown is an Apple LaserWriter II, a later model in the LaserWriter line.

Importance

John Warnock and Charles Geschke helped create a printing language called Interpress at Xerox PARC, but Xerox kept it inside the company. They founded Adobe in December 1982, and their team finished PostScript by the end of 1984. PostScript, the Apple LaserWriter, and Aldus PageMaker for the Macintosh started desktop publishing in 1985.

Interesting fact

In 2022 the Computer History Museum published an early version of the PostScript source code, which dates from February 1984.

Sources

  1. PostScript: A Digital Printing PressComputer History Museum (David C. Brock) · 2022-12-01
  2. 1985 | Timeline of Computer HistoryComputer History Museum
  3. This Day in History: Aldus and Adobe Systems Finalize MergerComputer History Museum · 1994-08-31
  4. Adobe Systems annual report on Form 10-KU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 1995
  5. File:Apple Laserwriter II.jpgWikimedia Commons