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Bitstream Inc. was a type foundry that produced digital typefaces. It was founded in 1981 by
Matthew Carter Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside)
long with Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensu ...
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and Mike Parker among others. It was located in
Marlborough, Massachusetts Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 41,793 at the 2020 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to ...
. 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 A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management-, and/or leveraged buyout became noted phenomena of 1 ...
in December 2013.


Products

Bitstream created a library of "classic" fonts (usually under different names for trademark reasons) in digital form (for example, Times Ten as 'Dutch 801'). The Bitstream font collection is most widely used through its inclusion with the CorelDRAW software. 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
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 rec ...
, by Matthew Carter, Iowan Old Style by
John Downer Sir John William Downer, KCMG, KC (6 July 1843 – 2 August 1915) was an Australian politician who served two terms as Premier of South Australia, from 1885 to 1887 and again from 1892 to 1893. He later entered federal politics and served as ...
and the
freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...
Bitstream Vera Vera is a digital typeface (computer font) superfamily with a liberal license. It was designed by Jim Lyles from the now-defunct Bitstream Inc. type foundry, and it is closely based on Bitstream Prima, for which Lyles was also responsible. It ...
family of fonts. One of their best known fonts is Swiss 721 BT, which is a
Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s ...
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 BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in 1990. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform that could be used by a substantial population of desktop users a ...
, 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 Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype Imaging, Monotype, in ...
,
Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s ...
and
Courier A courier is a person or organisation 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 TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating ...
, 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-based Web browser 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 wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sel ...
s and handset manufacturers. The product was discontinued by the end of 2011.


See also

*
Bitstream Vera Vera is a digital typeface (computer font) superfamily with a liberal license. It was designed by Jim Lyles from the now-defunct Bitstream Inc. type foundry, and it is closely based on Bitstream Prima, for which Lyles was also responsible. It ...
* Bitstream Charter *
Bitstream Cyberbit ''Bitstream Cyberbit'' is a commercial serif Unicode font designed by Bitstream Inc. It is freeware for non-commercial uses. It was one of the first widely available fonts to support a large portion of the Unicode repertoire. Cyberbit was devel ...
* MyFonts * ThunderHawk *
Bolt (web browser) The BOLT Browser was a web browser for mobile phones including feature phones and smartphones that can run Java ME applications. The BOLT Browser was offered free of charge to consumers and by license to mobile network operators and handset manuf ...
*
Corel Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo (pronounced like "all you do"), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviat ...
* TrueDoc *
Mike Parker (typographer) Mike Russell Parker (1929 - February 23, 2014) was a British-born American typographer and type designer. Parker is known for rediscovering a "nameless Roman" type font and preparing it as a ''Starling series'' for Font Bureau. Life and career ...


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 Software companies of the United States