PageMaker Past, Present, and Future
http://www.makingpages.org/pagemaker/history/index.html

Adams, Peter C.S.
Makingpages.org
2002

Abstract:

For millennia, humans have struggled to communicate, first with grunts and sign language, then with speech. But it was when humans learned to write that civilization became possible. First we painted on cave walls, then chiseled in stone, then wrote on more practical and portable things, like wood, papyrus, and finally paper. Hand printing ink on paper was the state of the art for hundreds of years until mechanical inventing was invented, first with engraving and then with movable type. But setting type with metal was still slow, dangerous, and difficult work. This was not dramatically changed until the twentieth century with machines like the Mergenthaler and Linotype. In 1984, the state of the art was phototypesetting on large, complex machines that were expensive and where what you was was nothing like what you would get. Then three companies -- Apple Computer, Adobe Systems, and the Aldus Corporation -- changed everything.