PDF History: The Story of the Portable Document Format

      Comments Off on PDF History: The Story of the Portable Document Format
PDF history

Ah, the humble PDF! How we appreciate your ability to display the same way across all devices and operating systems! How we revel in your ease and consistency! 

If you have ever opened a word document only to find a jumbled mess of nonsense that your coworker swears is a beautifully formatted masterpiece, you know the value of the Portable Document Format. Can you believe there was once a time before the PDF existed, and we all had to make sense out of mercurial attachments?

Anyone who has opened one of these documents is part of PDF history! If you have ever wondered who invented the PDF, this article is for you. Read on to learn the whole PDF story, including the history of the PDF! 

From Humble Beginnings

Recently, the world seems to fluctuate between flooding after a major storm event and bursting into flames. The effects of climate change are now undeniable, but it hasn’t always been that way. Long before An Inconvenient Truth and Al Gore’s presidential campaign, nerds were already conspiring to save the rainforest. 

Picture it: San Jose, 1991. John Warnock, one of the founders of adobe, was dreaming of a paperless office. What if a file format existed that displayed the same way across every computer in the office? 

Warnock believed a file type with that ability could replace paper. After all, it doesn’t matter who looks at a photocopy. A photocopy is static and looks the same to everyone! 

He dreamed of being able to send many different kinds of media through e-mail, which one could print consistently, no matter where a person was.

At the time, two technologies existed that almost got the job done. These were PostScript and Adobe Illustrator. PostScript could describe documents, and Illustrator could open them on multiple operating systems. 

The goal was to improve upon both PostScript and Illustrator to create something easy and intuitive, which one could use in any office. Today, that exists, and you can find more info.

From PostScript to PDF

The original name for the Portable Document Format was IPS, which stood for Interchangeable PostScript. This primitive version of the PDF we know today emerged in 1992, where it won an award. The release actually predated the release of Adobe Acrobat Reader, which would not become available until the middle of 1993. 

Back then, Acrobat was not great. It only supported RGB color, which meant it had limits. It did, however, support embedded text, bookmarks, and allowed linking within the document itself. 

If you are especially old school, you might remember a time when your PDF files were CARO files. This is because, for a time, the software that would become Acrobat had the name Carousel. It was also known as Camelot for a brief time, becoming Acrobat later. 

Though it was out there in the world for anyone to use, it wasn’t as accessible as it could have been. In part, this was likely due to the steep price tag. Even the personal version of the software ran an individual about $700, which wasn’t practical for the everyday consumer. 

Today, acrobat is much less expensive, and acrobat reader is free. This has proven key to its success as an accessible, universal format.

PDF Grows Up

It would take a while before the PDF would include many of the features we most appreciate today. By 1994 we would see the ability to include external links, as well as article threads and notes. 

Device-dependent color became the norm until Acrobat 3.0 launched in 1996. Finally, Acrobat provided support for CMYK color. That brought the format one step closer to displaying consistently across all devices.

The popularity of the format would increase as it continued to become more accessible to the average user. The first step was the Netscape browser plug-in, which popularized the format on the internet. Once developers made it possible to link to a PDF on an HTML website, we began to see it spread. 

It would take a while before it caught on, however. Because of all of the software required, most people saw it as more trouble than it was worth. The developers did not give up, however, adding and tweaking features and making it as accessible as possible.

Their hard work wasn’t for nothing. By 1999, PDF was a widely accepted file format. Adobe Reader had 100 million unique downloads.  

PDF Catches On

The release of Acrobat 5 in 2001 would be a big turning point for our favorite file format. That was when developers added features that made it a lot more accessible for the everyday user. The Acrobat interface began to look more familiar, resembling Microsoft Office. 

Most people could handle Microsoft Office and had used it before, so this simple facelift did a lot to make the everyday user comfortable. 

For the power users, 2004 would herald the release of Adobe Professional, providing an option for those who weren’t intimidated by a less intuitive interface. 

Of course, developers continued making improvements. Updates and new versions are still released regularly. Now almost anyone can open a PDF file and know for sure that someone on the other side of the world will be viewing it the same way. 

PDF History Continues 

We’re still pretty far off from the dream of the paperless office. There are still people out there who claim they don’t know how to export a file into a PDF. You still receive a lot of e-mails full of unreadable, poorly formatted text.

Luckily, PDF History is still in progress. As the climate crisis worsens, we’ll all be glad that a format exists that can help us to pivot and lead a more sustainable life. When we all began working from home during the pandemic, we were grateful for the power of the PDF, and we’re proud of how far it has come!

If you found this history fascinating, the learning doesn’t have to stop now! Check out the rest of the blog for more posts about all the tech you already love!