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| Industry | Software Engineering |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1982; 44 years ago (1982) |
| Founder | Peter Norton |
| Fate | merged intoSymantec (in 1990) |
| Successor | Symantec (then NortonLifeLock laterGen Digital) |
Peter Norton Computing, Inc. was a software company founded byPeter Norton. The first and best known software package it produced wasNorton Utilities. Another successful software package was Norton Commander, especially theDOS version. The company in this form lasted from its founding in 1982 until 1990, when it was acquired by Symantec (nowGen Digital).
The Symantec merger helped Norton Computing regain the market share it was losing to competitors, especiallyCentral Point Software. Norton Computing's revenues tripled between June 1990 and September 1991, and by November it appeared to have regained the market lead over Central Point.
Peter Norton founded the company in 1982 with $30,000 and an IBM computer.[1] The company was a pioneer inDOS-based utilities software. Its 1982 introduction of theNorton Utilities included Norton's UNERASE tool toretrieve erased data from DOS disks.
In 1984, Norton Computing reached $1 million in revenue, and version 3.0 of the Norton Utilities was released. Norton had three clerical people working for him. He was doing all of the software development, all of the book writing, all of the manual writing and running the business. The only thing he wasn't doing was stuffing the packages. He hired his fourth employee and first programmer, Brad Kingsbury, in July 1985. John Socha, the author of Norton Commander until 1989, was hired shortly after. From November 1985 until April 1986 Warren Woodford worked at Norton Computing and createdNorton Guides.[2][user-generated source?] In late 1985, Norton hired a business manager to take care of the day-to-day operations.[3]
In 1985, Norton Computing produced the Norton Editor, a programmer'stext editor created by Stanley Reifel, andNorton Guides, aterminate-and-stay-resident program which showed reference information forassembly language and other IBM PC internals, but could also display other reference information compiled into the appropriate file format.Norton Commander, a file managing tool for DOS, was introduced in 1986. In this year PNCI reached $5 million in revenues with Norton Utilities still bringing the largest parts.
In 1990, the company was acquired by Symantec.[4] The acquired company became a division of Symantec and was renamedPeter Norton Computing Group. Most of Norton Computing's 115 employees were retained.
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