had seen what had happened with all the other technologies that preceded it.
They never figured out a way to commercialize the Ethernet. They had managed
to commercialize the original laser printer (it was called the 9700), but it
was for mainframe computers; it replaced line printers. Line printers were the
old printers that used to be on mainframe computers, and they were big, noisy
devices that could only print text. The 9700 could print pages that were more
sophisticated. But it was mainframe printing, it wasn’t office printing, and it
wasn’t focused around publishing and the graphic arts. If you look at a typical
office memo coming out today, you would never have seen anything like that
20 years ago. It would have been Courier or Elite typefaces on a typewriter. It’s
all completely different now and people don’t even think about it. They just
have expectations that the text will look high-quality, that it will be proportionately
spaced, and the pages will contain illustrations and photographs.
Livingston: We just take for granted what you guys created.
Geschke: That’s what’s really cool. That’s when you know you’ve had an impact.
I know I can speak for John on this too, but the biggest thrill is frankly not the
financial success, it’s the ability to have an impact. Because we’re both engineers
at heart and that’s every engineer’s dream—to build something that
millions of people will use.
People with no training in the graphic arts could now develop materials that
got a message across and did it more dramatically. I remember very early on, I
gave a talk in Chicago somewhere—some guy in a small brokerage business
somehow convinced me to give a talk. He said, “We use your stuff, but we
always print it in Courier (which is the typewriter typeface) because people
who see it printed in a high-quality typeface think it’s old news.” You see, he was
on a cusp of a change. Now people don’t think about it that way, but in those
days, if it didn’t come out in Courier, it must have gone to a printer and a typesetter
and it must have taken 2 to 3 weeks to get prepared.
Livingston: What surprised you most about the early days?
Geschke: To me, the most surprising thing was how responsive people in the
publishing industry were to accept and embrace change. After thinking about it
later, I realized that as I had listened to my dad talk about his profession—and
he of course told me never to go into the printing business—it was because he
recognized intuitively that change had to happen in that industry. He wasn’t