Berkeley Systems
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Berkeley Systems was a San Francisco Bay area software company cofounded in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. It made money early on by doing contract work for the National Institute of Health, specifically in making modifications to the Macintosh so that it could be usable by people with very low vision, or even the blind. Several of these programs were licensed by Apple Computer and added to the operating system. Perhaps the most ambitious of these technologies was a program that could read the Macintosh screen, called Outspoken, which won a technology award from the Smithsonian in 1990.
The first commercial success for Berkeley Systems was a virtual desktop product for the Macintosh called Stepping Out. Given the small size of the first Macintosh screens, this product had some use and the idea was widely copied.
The much bigger success was After Dark, a modular screensaver and the first of its kind to be sold. The idea was brought to Berkeley Systems by Jack Eastman and Patrick Beard. Eastman was later put in charge of software development at Berkeley Systems.
Its best-selling game was called You Don't Know Jack, a trivia game which grew out of one of the After Dark screen saver modules.
The company, based in Berkeley, grew to 120 employees and USD $30 million annual revenue before it was acquired by the Sierra On-Line division of CUC Corporation in 1997 for $13.8 million. Not many years later, the division was shut down.
During the 90s Berkeley Systems filed a lawsuit against Delrina software because Delrina made a parody of Berkeley's famous "flying toasters" screen saver. This set a legal precedent that software companies do not enjoy the same First Amendment protections against satire as others do.
Boyd and Blades went on to found the MoveOn.org liberal political group in 1998.
External links
- [Archived versions of official website (berksys.com)] at the Internet Archive
- [Berkeley Systems games listing] from MobyGames
- ["Whatever happened to Berkeley Systems"] article
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