Adobe Founder Charles Geschke Dies At 81, Leaving ‘Indelible Mark’ On The World
Images via Schmiebel (CC BY-SA 4.0), Adobe (CC BY-SA 3.0), Adobe (CC BY-SA 3.0) / Wikimedia Commons
Charles “Chuck” Geschke, co-founder of Adobe, died in his home of the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Los Altos last Saturday. He was 81.
In a press statement, the company released an internal letter written by Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to employees. It read: “It is with profound sadness that I share that our beloved co-founder Dr Chuck Geschke, has passed away at the age of 81, leaving an indelible mark on our company and the world.
“This is a huge loss for the entire Adobe community and the technology industry, for whom he has been a guide and hero for decades,” Narayen continued.
Geschke founded Adobe with fellow Xerox co-worker John Warnock. They had left the firm after Xerox refused to commercialize a technology the two developed. Called the PostScript, this technology is still the graphics industry standard for printers today.
As per PetaPixel, at the time of their invention, dot-matrix printers were the norm. However, that technology struggled with printing images and typography as those shapes tended to come out blocky and imprecise. The next generation of printers was able to fix this, thanks to the PostScript technology the Adobe founders created.
Most notably, of course, is Geschke’s contribution to the development of the Portable Document Format, or PDF. According to Adobe’s blog, in the early 1990s, Mac, Windows, UNIX, and MS DOS all had their own way of interpreting files. If you were to move a file created in Windows to a Mac, it was would most likely be mangled. Geschke and Warnock sought to find a solution to the problem to ensure “the file would look the same everywhere it went.” And thanks to their work, we’re now able to view a file precisely, down to the pixel.
Dr Warnock, the other half of Adobe’s founding, shared, “I could never have imagined having a better, more likable, or more capable business partner. Not having Chuck in our lives will leave a huge hole and those who knew him will all agree.”
Geschke is survived by his wife of 56 years, three children, and seven grandchildren.
We’re deeply saddened to share that our beloved co-founder, Dr. Chuck Geschke, has passed away. Chuck was a hero and guiding light for so many of us in the technology industry. He leaves an indelible mark on our company and the world. https://t.co/NYoZI29num pic.twitter.com/FhNY8iN7Dx
— Adobe (@Adobe) April 17, 2021
[via PetaPixel, Associated Press and Adobe, images via Wikimedia Commons]
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