Charles Geschke
| Charles Geschke | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
September 11, 1939 Cleveland, Ohio, United States |
| Residence | Los Altos, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Alma mater |
Carnegie Mellon University, Xavier University |
| Known for |
Adobe Systems PostScript |
| Notable awards | Medal of Achievement from the American Electronics Association in 2006 Marconi Prize (2010) Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from John Carroll University |
Charles M. "Chuck" Geschke (born September 11, 1939) is an American businessman. He is best known as the 1982 co-founder with John Warnock of Adobe Systems Inc., the graphics and publishing software company.
Geschke attended Saint Ignatius High School, and earned a BA in classics and an MS in mathematics from Xavier University, as well as a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He taught mathematics at John Carroll University from 1963 to 1968.
Prior to co-founding Adobe, Geschke and Warnock worked at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Geschke had started there in the early 1970s. Geschke formed and headed PARC's Imaging Sciences Laboratory in 1978 where he directed research activities in the fields of computer science, graphics, image processing, and optics. There he hired his long-term research partner, John Warnock and together they invented a page description language (PDL), which provided a means to describe complex forms like typefaces electronically – called Interpress. Unable to convince Xerox management of the commercial value of Warnock's InterPress graphics language for controlling printing, the two left Xerox to co-found Adobe Systems.
Geschke and co-founder Warnock's Interpress language evolved into Adobe's PostScript, which when combined with hardware from Apple computer, formed the first desktop publishing (DTP) system where anyone could set type, compose documents, and print them as they appeared on the screen electronically. PostScript was marketable as it was machine-independent and extremely flexible. With this new approach, they brought their product to the market, allowing business users to greatly improve the quality and efficiency of their document production, and thus began an entire industry. From December 1986 until July 1994 Geschke was Adobe's Chief Operating Officer, and from April 1989 until April 2000 he was the company's president. Geschke retired as president of Adobe in 2000, shortly before his partner Warnock left as CEO. He has served as Co-Chairman of the Board of Adobe since September 1997.
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