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| Industry | Software |
|---|---|
| Founded | February 1984 (1984-02) |
| Founders |
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| Defunct | November 1994 (1994-11) |
| Fate | Merged |
| Successor | Adobe Systems |
| Headquarters | |
| Products | PageMaker |
Aldus Corporation was an American software company best known for its pioneeringdesktop publishing software.PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era ofdesktop computers such as theMacintosh seeing widespread use in the publishing industry.[1]Paul Brainerd, the company's co-founder, coined the termdesktop publishing to describe this paradigm.[2][3] The company also originated theTag Image File Format (TIFF) file format, widely used in the digital graphics profession.[4][5][6]
Aldus was founded by Brainerd (who also served as chairman of the company's board), Jeremy Jaech, Mark Sundstrom, Mike Templeman, and Dave Walter.[7] It was founded inSeattle in 1984 and was acquired byAdobe Systems a decade later.
The company was named after 15th-centuryVenetian printerAldus Manutius.
PageMaker was released in July 1985 and relied onAdobe'sPostScript page description language. For output, it used theApple LaserWriter, a PostScriptlaser printer. PageMaker for thePC was released in 1986.
In 1988, Aldus released an illustration program,FreeHand,[8] which was licensed fromFontographer developerAltsys. FreeHand competed directly withAdobe Illustrator, which had been released a year earlier. The rivalry continued for years, even after Adobe acquired Aldus in 1994, because FreeHand was not included, but Adobe eventually acquired Freehand in 2005 with its acquisition ofMacromedia. FreeHand MX was the last version offered by Adobe but is no longer sold or updated.[9]
In early 1990, Aldus boughtSilicon Beach Software, acquiring many consumer titles for theMacintosh, includingSuperPaint,Digital Darkroom,SuperCard, Super3D, and Personal Press (later renamed Adobe Home Publisher). Silicon Beach was located inSan Diego, California, and became the Aldus Consumer Division.[10]
In 1993, Aldus bought After Hours Software and incorporated its products, TouchBase Pro and DateBook Pro, into the Aldus Consumer Division. In the same year, it acquiredCompany of Science and Art (CoSA).[11]
In September 1994, Adobe purchased Aldus for $446 million.[12] At that time, PageMaker was steadily losing market share toQuarkXPress, but Adobe was still five years from launching their own desktop publisher,InDesign. In 2001, after two major releases under Adobe, PageMaker was discontinued and users were urged to switch to the two-year-old InDesign.
Aldus developed theTIFF and OPI industry standards. The three founders ofVisio Corporation left Aldus in 1990 to create the product which later became known asMicrosoft Office Visio.
Paul Brainerd and the other Aldus partners named the company afterAldus Pius Manutius, a renowned fifteenth-centuryVenetian pioneer in publishing known for standardizing the rules of punctuation and also presenting several typefaces, including the first italic. Manutius later founded the first modern publishing house, the Aldine Press.[13][8]
(formerlySilicon Beach Software and After Hours Software)
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