Jonathan Gay
| Jonathan Gay | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1967 (age 49–50) |
| Alma mater | Harvey Mudd College |
| Occupation | Computer programmer, software entrepreneur |
| Known for | Co-founding FutureWave Software (1993) Flash programmer |
Jonathan Gay is an American computer programmer and software entrepreneur based in Northern California. Gay co-founded FutureWave Software in 1993. For a decade, he was the main programmer and visionary of Flash, an animation editor for web pages. He founded Software as Art, which was later renamed Greenbox, which made energy management solutions for the home.
While in high school, Gay won a science fair award for programming on an Apple II computer and came to the attention of Silicon Beach Software founder Charlie Jackson. Gay began programming for Silicon Beach in his senior year. His first published product, released in 1985, was Airborne!, a black-and-white game for the Macintosh computer. While in college, he collaborated with game designer Mark Pierce and programmed Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle. All three were award-winning programs that included digital sounds, an unusual innovation for that era.
After graduating from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, Gay worked full-time for Silicon Beach Software. During this time he added some significant features to Superpaint 2, including Bézier curves, and began work on IntelliDraw, which was published by Aldus after the acquisition of Silicon Beach Software in 1990.
In 1993, Gay and Jackson founded FutureWave Software with the intention of creating graphics software for pen computing, in particular the Penpoint operating system that ran on the EO Personal Communicator.
Gay and programmer Robert Tatsumi finished the company's first product in 1994, SmartSketch, a vector-drawing program for the PenPoint operating system. Shortly thereafter, PenPoint was discontinued, ending that market for SmartSketch. SmartSketch was ported to the Windows and Macintosh operating systems, but with the advent in 1995 of the World Wide Web, Gay saw an opportunity to create an editor that could produce animations for web pages. The core technology of SmartSketch was repurposed to create a new product, FutureSplash Animator, adding support for timeline animation and a Netscape browser plug-in for playing back content.
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