Charles Geschke

"The enormity of the impact that this company has had on the way everything that is printed is produced cannot be measured," said Christopher Galvin, an analyst with Hambrecht & Quist LLC in San Francisco. And Geschke himself points out that this sphere of influence now includes Hollywood, television and, of course, the Internet.

For this only child,his father was a Cleveland photoengraver and his mother a Depression-era bankruptcy court paralegal,the type was cast at an early age.

"I used to visit my father at work and watched him working with cyanide and other terrible chemicals etching printing plates," recalled Geschke. It was hazardous work and young Chuck, who knew there had to be a better way, recalls receiving strong fatherly advice: " 'Don't go into the printing business,' he told me."

Both parents, though, admonished him to get an education. "It's the one thing that can never be taken away. My mother saw people lose their jobs, their cars, their houses, but an education is forever," Geschke said.

Geschke listened. Armed with his childhood penchant for disassembling the family's appliances and a trio of college degrees, he wound up at Xerox Corp.'s famed Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a breeding ground for inventions that seemingly made billions for everyone except Xerox. He hired Warnock in 1978 and in 1980 founded PARC's Imaging Sciences Laboratory with the mission of marrying computer technology to Xerox's legacy printing products. The duo's Interpress page-description language became Xerox's internal standard, but the company refused to license it to others.

Frustrated with the inability to publicly showcase their creation, Geschke and Warnock left PARC and started Adobe in 1982, naming the fledgling company after the creek running behind Warnock's house. The original mission, Warnock recalled, was to go into a service business, "kind of like what Kinko's is today."

Fortunately, fate stepped in,twice. Financier Bill Hambrecht urged the duo to refocus on software instead of services. That repositioning led to PostScript, built originally as nothing more than a method to get an image from screen to paper. The second hero in Adobe's success was Apple Computer Inc. visionary Steve Jobs. It was he who foresaw the commercial potential of PostScript.

Timing, as they say, is everything. Jobs had his Macintosh, Paul Brainerd from Aldus Corp. had his PageMaker page-layout program, which Adobe later acquired, and Canon had just launched the first low-cost laser printer. Jobs saw PostScript as the glue and pursued a licensing arrangement. "So when we did the contract with Apple we changed the business model," Geschke said. A new kind of computing, desktop publishing, was born. Typefaces followed. So too did Photoshop, a product developed by two brothers and acquired by Adobe.

Illustrator,and much more,followed.

"Nearly every image in print media is touched by Photoshop," said Francesca Messina, senior art director of BusinessWeek magazine. "Photoshop has revolutionized the creation of images for publications."

Adobe had changed commercial printing and graphic arts forever, but it all came crashing down on May 26, 1992. It was on that morning that Geschke, arriving at work, was abducted at gunpoint and held for ransom for five long days. In an FBI search that was, at the time, the biggest since the kidnapping of Patti Hearst, Geschke was returned safely and his kidnappers apprehended. Though the ordeal took its toll on his family and colleagues, he looks back on it as a learning experience.

"We had a gift,that ordinary people can confront a terrible situation and with the right inner strength deal with it," Geschke said. "I had never been involved with anything violent before,never even fired a gun."

Roman Catholics, the Geschke family,wife, Nan, and children Peter, Kathy and John,did a lot of praying those five days. Though he is still somewhat sensitive to strange cars and loud noises, the episode is nearly forgotten.

Adobe is one of only a few high-tech companies still run by its founders, noted Hambrecht & Quist's Galvin. "Chuck and John deserve an award for longevity, along with Microsoft's Gates and Oracle's [Larry] Ellison," he said.

For all Geschke's accomplishments, not to mention the great personal wealth he has amassed, it is logical to wonder why he still bothers with work instead of traveling. In fact, he has combined both. Time at headquarters has given way to trips around the world,eight in 1999,to promote the company, its products and vision.

Ask Geschke what Adobe does and he admits to a bit of alchemy. "We combine art with science." And politics. "In India, all of their election materials are being distributed in Adobe Acrobat format. That's a compelling thing," he said. But in reality, the 60-year-old Geschke is just embarking on a new career,the Internet. "All of the cute Web stuff you see today is going to evolve into a true medium."

Geschke finds the comparison with Gutenberg both humbling and amusing. "Remember, Gutenberg's business failed," he said, forgetting for the moment that Adobe nearly came to its own ignominious end in August 1998. Its share price took a nosedive and dozens of employees were let go in a major reorganization. "We had gotten too big. We got rid of two entire middle layers of management." Recovery has been sweet: Those $35 shares are now trading at about $125.

But in the end, Geschke is just a regular guy, a family man in khaki pants and plaid shirt. "It's important to Chuck and me that we are good people running a good company," said Warnock. "Chuck is very ethical; he's the kind of person you look up to." Being looked up to is one thing, but Geschke himself is looking ahead, moving a whole lot faster than Gutenberg could have dreamed. "The printing press changed Western civilization, politics, education and social structures, but it took 400 years. The Internet is only 30 and it is already having a comparable impact. Who knows what's next?"