In Marin County, California, a small group of people got together January 30, 1982 and formed Autodesk. As founder John Walker stated “the game has changed.”
Today marks the 39th birthday of Autodesk.
Autodesk’s Flying founders
”Autodesk Founders. They didn't walk on water, but they could fly pretty well.”
The Autodesk flying founders from left to right:
Rudolf Künzli, Mike Ford, Dan Drake, Mauri Laitinen, Greg Lutz, David Kalish, Lars Moureau, Richard Handyside,Kern Sibbald, Hal Royaltey, Duff Kurland, John Walker, Keith Marcelius”
Happy Birthday to everyone that were involved in the founding of the company, works or worked at the company,our stellar partners, and our amazing customers.
From my unofficial Autodesk History Gallery and memorabilia collection. Many may not be aware that the name Autodesk was actually for a product of the early pre-Autodesk company. So we were named after our early product, not a CAD software, but a Contact Manager software to replace the 1980 era paper 3” x 5” rolodex cards.
AutoCAD came that Fall and was released to customers in 1983..We have released 35 releases of AutoCAD since that time and many many other popular products and platforms like Autodesk Inventor, 3dsMax, Revit, Maya, Fusion 360, Forge, and many more.
Some of the 1982/83 era AutoCAD 5-1/4” floppy disks.
To answer if Autodesk was in the Star trek or Star Wars camp, we are firmly in both. Our software is used in the creation of Star Wars and you can see this epic Texas Instruments ad featuring AutoCAD and Star Trek. Thank you for this historic ad Robert - @Retro_CAD on Twitter.
I have an online meeting next week with an early employee who created the infamous bike sample drawing in the early 80s.
Do you have any Autodesk history, stories, memorabilia you want to share or document to preserve, please contact me at shaan.hurley at autodesk.com.
Next year, we will turn 40!
Cheers,
Shaan
