Bitstream Inc.

Bitstream Inc.

Former type	Public (NASDAQ: BITS)
Industry	Type foundry, mobile phone web browsers
Fate	Acquired by Monotype
Founded	1981
Defunct	March 19, 2012 (2012-03-19)
Headquarters	Marlborough, Massachusetts, United States
Key people	Amos Kaminski, Chairman and Interim CEO
Number of employees	96
Website	www.bitstream.com

Bitstream Inc. was a type foundry that produced digital typefaces. Founded in 1981 by Matthew Carter and Mike Parker among others, it claims to be the oldest such company. It was located in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The font business, including MyFonts, was acquired by Monotype Imaging in March 2012. The remainder of the business, responsible for Pageflex and Bolt Browser, was spun off to a new entity named Marlborough Software Development Holdings Inc. It was later renamed Pageflex, Inc following a successful management buyout in December 2013.

Bitstream created a library of "classic" fonts (usually under different names for trademark reasons) in digital form (for example, Times Ten as 'Dutch 801'). The Bitstream font collection is most widely used through its inclusion with the CorelDRAW software. The company received extensive criticism for its strategy of cheaply offering digitisations of pre-existing typefaces that it had not designed. While technically not illegal, font designer John Hudson would describe its selling of large numbers of typefaces on CD as "one of the worst instances of piracy in the history of type".

Bitstream developed a number of fonts on its own, such as Charter, by Matthew Carter, Iowan Old Style by John Downer and the freeware Bitstream Vera family of fonts.

One of their best known fonts is Swiss 721 BT, which is a Helvetica clone with condensed versions and a rounded version. It was among the first digitally available Swiss family typefaces, being designed for that purpose in 1982.

Another Bitstream product is Font Fusion, a font rasterizing engine developed jointly with Type Solutions, Inc., which was later owned entirely by Bitstream.