I have one of the first AutoCAD manuals with this old logo and showed it at my keynote on the topic of Autodesk and Innovation #AutodeskInnovation at the ProSoft Powerlaunch event Thursday.
2 comments
why did they call it “Auto” cad back then? were they trying to impress car designers?
there was no lisp right, so automation was not on the table yet…
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James,’
‘
Because key Autodesk’s founders were originally a CPU chip company (MarinChip) that got into the software business and formed Autodesk. The first product was a contact management system named Autodesk and there was also an AutoBook product idea. Apparently the “Auto” from that proceeded CAD since as John mentions they did not know they were in the CAD business until Computer Faire and 1982 COMDEX and their first c based AutoCAD 8080 and 86. It was arguably more “auto” than a pencil and other options for the PC market and not many could afford a six figure mainframe CAD when AutoCAD was $1000.
By the way the Autodesk product was shown at Computer Faire 1982 and at that time Autodesk was then named “Desktop Solutions” until the State rejected the name. http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/section2_6_9.html
why did they call it “Auto” cad back then? were they trying to impress car designers?
there was no lisp right, so automation was not on the table yet…
James,’
‘
Because key Autodesk’s founders were originally a CPU chip company (MarinChip) that got into the software business and formed Autodesk. The first product was a contact management system named Autodesk and there was also an AutoBook product idea. Apparently the “Auto” from that proceeded CAD since as John mentions they did not know they were in the CAD business until Computer Faire and 1982 COMDEX and their first c based AutoCAD 8080 and 86. It was arguably more “auto” than a pencil and other options for the PC market and not many could afford a six figure mainframe CAD when AutoCAD was $1000.
By the way the Autodesk product was shown at Computer Faire 1982 and at that time Autodesk was then named “Desktop Solutions” until the State rejected the name. http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/section2_6_9.html