Office Workstations Limited (OWL) was a British

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

company based in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

. OWL was founded in 1984 by five former employees of ICL (Ian Ritchie, Stuart Harper, Gordon Dougan, Richard Stonehouse and Dave MacLaren) who had previously worked at ICL's Scottish Development Centre at

Dalkeith Palace Dalkeith Palace is a country house in Dalkeith, Midlothian, Scotland. It was the seat of the Dukes of Buccleuch from 1642 until 1914, and is owned by the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust. The present palace was built 1701–1711 on the site of the ...

until its closure the previous year. The following year (1985), OWL International Inc., a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

subsidiary, was formed in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. The American subsidiary, then headed by ex-Microsoft executive Alan M. Boyd achieved considerable attention (particularly from

Esther Dyson Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951) is a Swiss-born American investor, journalist, author, commentator and philanthropist. She is the executive founder of Wellville, a nonprofit project focused on improving equitable wellbeing. Dyson is also an ang ...

who understood its potential) but was eventually sidelined when Apple elected to bundle their

Hypercard HyperCard is a software application and development kit for Apple Macintosh and Apple IIGS computers. It is among the first successful hypermedia systems predating the World Wide Web. HyperCard combines a flat-file database with a graphical, fl ...

product free with every Macintosh. This caused considerable consternation amongst Apple's developer community who became wary of Apple's motives for requiring developers to submit product designs for approval.

Hypertext Pioneer

OWL developed and supported

Guide A guide is a person who leads travelers, sportspeople, or tourists through unknown or unfamiliar locations. The term can also be applied to a person who leads others to more abstract goals such as knowledge or wisdom. Travel and recreation Expl ...

, a pioneering

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...

authoring system for the

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, originally conceived at the

University of Kent , motto_lang = , mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...

. Guide was likely the first ever commercially available hypertext browser, when it was introduced on the Macintosh in 1986, nearly a decade before hypertext became the standard method of developing and browsing the Internet.

Ownership

OWL was bought for over £7m in 1989 by Matsushita Electric Industrial (MEI) of Japan and became Panasonic Office Workstations Ltd.. They subsequently developed software to support next generation

consumer electronics Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic (analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually r ...

., including

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

technology,

Digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...

, next generation mobile communications,

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

delivery of

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

and 3D car navigation systems.

Spin Off Companies

A number of spin-off companies were formed by ex-OWL employees, including InfoAccess (a

management buy-out 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 ...

of OWL International Inc.), Electrum Multimedia Ltd.,CAPDM Limited
Data Discoveries Ltd. and Digital Bridges Ltd.

Closure

On 30 April 2005 Panasonic OWL was shut down.

References

Defunct technology companies of the United Kingdom Software companies established in 1984 Software companies disestablished in 1989 Companies based in Edinburgh British companies disestablished in 1989 British companies established in 1984 {{ict-company-stub