What we currently refer to as Desktop Publishing (DTP) has a history dating back to the mid 1980s. Some will argue that the Pixel work station produced by the company Scitex, actually started the DTP revolution with the introduction of its work station in 1982. But personally, I consider this system to be a professional printing system, and don't feel it fits into the "desktop" concept. It was a rather large, free standing computer, and was not designed for home or small business use.
click to enlarge
So let's start where most people in the DTP field would consider the "birth" of DTP. During the mid 1980s there was an awesome convergence of technological stars. Four companies were primarily responsible for the birth of DTP. Apple Computer launched the Apple Lisa in 1983 with a user friendly graphical user interface (GUI) and a mouse. The very next year, Apple launched the Apple Macintosh. Adobe, founded in 1982, released PostScript, a page description language that allowed software to talk to printers in a more complex manner to include graphics and text on the same page. Canon dropped the ball by not properly marketing the laser printer they invented, so in 1984, Hewlett Packard developed the LaserJet desktop laser printer and marketed them directly to home computer users and small businesses and soon dominated the field. In 1985 Aldus Pagemaker (later bought buy Adobe) allowed designers to design their page layouts in
WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format, and the Apple LaserWriter was launched, pushing Apple to the forefront of the desktop publishing world.
