Adobe Co-Founder Chuck Geschke Dies at 81

Kim Lyons, reporting for The Verge:

Charles “Chuck” Geschke, a co-founder of Adobe who helped develop the PDF, has died at age 81, the company said in a statement. […]

Geschke earned a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and then took a job at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where he met Warnock. The pair left Xerox in 1982 and founded Adobe. Their first product was Adobe PostScript, the programming language that helped boost the desktop publishing industry.

Geschke was chief operating officer of Adobe from December 1986 to July 1994 and president from April 1989 until his retirement in April 2000. He served as chairman of the board with Warnock from September 1997 to January 2017 and was a member of the board until April 2020, when he became emeritus board member.

“I could never have imagined having a better, more likable, or more capable business partner,” Warnock said in a statement. “Not having Chuck in our lives will leave a huge hole and those who knew him will all agree.”

Impossible to overstate how important PostScript was (and remains). What made PostScript so good, so useful, so lasting, is that it’s a full-fledged programming language.

I forgot about this story:

In addition to his contributions to the technology industry, Geschke was also known for surviving a 1992 kidnapping attempt. Two men snatched him as he arrived at work one morning and held him for four days, demanding ransom. He was eventually rescued by the FBI.

★ Sunday, 18 April 2021