Bitstream Inc. was an American

type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and ...

that produced digital

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

s. It was founded in 1981 by Matthew Carter, Mike Parker, Cherie Cone, and Rob Friedman, all former employees of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. It was located in

Marlborough, Massachusetts Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 41,793 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high ...

. The font business, including MyFonts, was acquired by Monotype Imaging in March 2012. The remainder of the business, responsible for Pageflex and Bolt Browser, was spun off to a new entity named Marlborough Software Development Holdings Inc. It was later renamed Pageflex, Inc following a successful management buyout in December 2013.

Products

Bitstream created a library of "classic" fonts (usually under different names for

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

reasons) in digital form. For example, Times Ten was released as ''Dutch 801'', Akzidenz-Grotesk as ''Gothic 725'',

Aurora An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

is ''News 706'', Antique Olive as ''Incised 901'', Bembo as ''Aldine 401'', Berthold Block as ''Gothic 821'', Bodoni Campanile as ''Modern 735'', Choc as ''Staccato 555'', Codex as ''Calligraphic 421'', Cochin is ''Engravers' Oldstyle 205'', Coronet is ''Ribbon 131'', Eurostile as ''Square 721'', Frutiger as ''Humanist 777'', Gill Sans as ''Humanist 521'', Kabel as ''Geometric 231'', Memphis as ''GeoSlab 703'', Metro as ''Geometric 415'', Mistral is ''Staccato 222'', Melior is ''Zapf Elliptical'', Optima as ''Zapf Humanist'', Oscar as ''Formal 436'', Old English Text is ''Cloister Black'', Peignot as ''Exotic 350'', Perpetua is ''Lapidary 333'', Plantin as ''Aldine 721'', Profil as ''Decorated 035'', Palatino as ''Zapf Calligraphic'', Rockwell is ''Geometric Slabserif 712'',

Syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

as ''Humanist 531'', Torino as ''Industrial 736'' and Univers as ''Zurich''. The Bitstream font collection is most widely used through its inclusion with the CorelDRAW software, as well as other Corel products such as WordPerfect Office. The company received extensive criticism for its strategy of cheaply offering digitisations of pre-existing typefaces that it had not designed. While technically not illegal, font designer John Hudson would describe its selling of large numbers of typefaces on CD at discount prices as "one of the worst instances of piracy in the history of type". Bitstream developed a number of fonts on its own, such as Amerigo, by Gerard Unger

Charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...

, by Matthew Carter, Carmina by Gudrun Zapf, Chianti by Dennis Pasternak, Iowan Old Style by John Downer, Arrus by Richard Lipton and the freeware Bitstream Vera family of fonts. One of their best known fonts is Swiss 721 BT, which is a Helvetica clone with condensed versions and a rounded version. It was among the first digitally available Swiss family typefaces, being designed for that purpose in 1982. Another Bitstream product is Font Fusion, a font rasterizing engine developed jointly with Type Solutions, Inc., which was later owned entirely by Bitstream. The multi-byte character set was named Bitstream International Character Set ( BICS).

History

The company had a high level of involvement in BeOS, with older BeOS releases using a Bitstream renderer, and the latest development releases from 2001 using Font Fusion. The OS, including its freeware releases, included a large number of Bitstream fonts, including their clones of Times New Roman, Helvetica and

Courier A courier is a person or organization that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...

. On December 2, 1998, Bitstream Inc. announced acquisition of all outstanding stock of Type Solutions, Inc. In addition, Sampo Kaasila, its founder and president and the creator of TrueType, agreed to join Bitstream's team as Director of Research and Development. In March 2000, Bitstream launched MyFonts, an open marketplace offering fonts from various foundries. In January 2009, Bitstream introduced the BOLT Browser, a

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of porting, portable code for embedded system, embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digita ...

-based

Web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

for mobile phones. It was distributed free of charge to consumers and was built using the company's ThunderHawk mobile Web browsing technology for

mobile network operator A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a mobile network provider, mobile network carrier, mobile , wireless service provider, wireless carrier, wireless operator, wireless telco, or cellular company, is a telecommunications provider of se ...

s and handset manufacturers. The product was discontinued by the end of 2011.

References

{{Authority control Commercial type foundries Software companies based in Massachusetts Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts Design companies established in 1981 Software companies established in 1981 1981 establishments in Massachusetts Software companies disestablished in 2012 Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq 2012 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States

Products

History

See also

References