Peter Norton
| Peter Norton | |
|---|---|
| Born |
14 November 1943 Aberdeen, Washington, US |
| Residence | New York Martha's Vineyard |
| Alma mater | Reed College, Portland, Oregon |
| Occupation | Programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist |
| Years active | 1965–present |
| Spouse(s) |
Eileen Harris (m. 1983–2000) Gwen Adams (m. 2007) |
| Children | Diana and Michael |
Peter Norton (born November 14, 1943) is an American programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist. He is best known for the computer programs and books that bear his name and portrait. Norton sold his PC software business to Symantec Corporation in 1990.
Norton was born in Aberdeen, Washington and raised in Seattle. He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, graduating in 1965. Before discovering microcomputers, he spent a dozen years working on mainframes and minicomputers for companies including Boeing and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His earliest low-level system utilities were designed to allow mainframe programmers access to some previous RAM that IBM normally reserved for diagnostics. This foreshadowed his personal computer work, where he became known as a savvy author of low-level system utilities and reference books.
When the IBM PC made its debut in 1981, Norton was among the first to buy one. After he was laid off during an aerospace industry cutback, he took up microcomputer programming to make ends meet. One day he accidentally deleted a file. Rather than re-enter the data, as most would have, he decided to write a program to recover the information from the disk. His friends were delighted with the program and he developed a group of utility programs that he sold – one at a time – to user groups. In 1982, he founded Peter Norton Computing with $30,000 and an IBM computer.
The company was a pioneer in DOS-based utilities software. Its 1982 introduction of the Norton Utilities included Norton's popular UNERASE tool to retrieve erased data from DOS disks. Norton marketed the program (primarily on foot) through his one-man software publishing company, leaving behind little pamphlets with technical notes at users group meetings and computer stores. A publisher saw his pamphlets, and saw that he could write about a technical subject. The publisher called him and asked him if he wanted to write a book. Norton's first computer book, Inside the IBM PC: Access to Advanced Features & Programming (Techniques), was published in 1983. Eight editions of this bestseller were published, the last in 1999. Norton wrote several other technical manuals and introductory computing books. He began writing monthly columns in 1983 for PC Magazine and later PC Week magazine as well, which he wrote until 1987. He soon became recognized as a principal authority on IBM personal computer technology.
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