Desktop Publishing, Part 3

Abstract

The articles in this special section focus on the emergence and growth of desktop publishing. This is the third special issue that is devoted to the history of desktop publishing. The first issue appeared in the fall of 2018, and was about the developments in the 1960s and 1970s of computer-driven printing and the technologies that led to the commercial growth of the desktop publishing industry. The second issue, in the fall of 2019, continued the story by describing how those technologies, developed in the 1970s particularly at Xerox PARC, became the foundation for the growth of major desktop-publishing software companies, with articles by founders of Adobe, Aldus, Quark, Frame Technology, and Ventura. The prediction that computers would end the era of print publication goes as far back as Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Memex. The first two Annals special issues on desktop publishing have documented what happened instead, as computing became central to publishing. They were primarily about the technology and the companies that created the digital publishing industry and made it so popular. We continue that documentation in this issue, and also have two articles on the history of font design, which is central to all publishing, both traditional “hot-metal” and digital.