Software Publishing Corp.
Software Publishing Corporation started in 1980 when three friends at Hewlett-Packard decided to form their own software company. Fred Gibbons, Janelle Bedke, and John Page had the goal of packaging up software solutions.
Early SPC software was developed for the Apple II, though the company would become more notable for their Harvard Graphics application as well as their 'pfs:' suite of business tools in DOS.
With the rise of Microsoft Windows in the early nineties, SPC saw their market share plummet, with the company eventually being acquired by Allegro New Media in 1996 (who had also acquired Serif Inc. that same year).
SPC was based in Mountain View, CA.
The PFS [Personal Filing System] Suite
SPC's first application was PFS, a flat-file database written for the Apple II. This was ported to DOS and renamed pfs:File. It was soon followed in 1983 by a number of business applications including pfs:Write (a word processor), pfs:Plan (a spreadsheet), pfs:Report (reporting software), and pfs:Graph (graphing software).
pfs:Write, which launched in 1983 for both Apple and DOS platforms, was designed to be an easy-to-learn but full-featured word processor. It contained a spell-checker, mail merge, and typical typeface options such as bold and underline. You could also copy and paste within a document. Version 1.1 followed in 1984. pfs:Write later had more extensive sibling, pfs:Professional Write which was released in 1991. The last version, 3.0 for DOS, arrived in 1994.
Later on, further applications were launched to fill other categories of business software. pfs:Publisher was their popular desktop publishing solution. As was common in the early 90s, many of these tools were bundled together into an 'office' suite. Unsurprisingly, SPC's flavour of this was called pfs:Office. A cut-down version of this was also released, called pfs:First Choice, in order to compete with the likes of Microsoft Works. With some success, SPC expanded to create further easy-to-use and simpler 'First' products including pfs:First Publisher (an entry-level desktop publisher), pfs:First Graphics and more. Unfortunately, files created in any of the 'First' products were completely incompatible with the more professionally-oriented 'pfs:' range.
Harvard Graphics
Harvard Graphics, or "Harvard Presentation Graphics" to use its full name, was borne in 1986 - a time when most applications were text-only, running on DOS. Bringing sophisticated on-screen graphics to such a platform was somewhat ground-breaking, and Harvard Graphics was seen as a new leader in presentation graphics.
An advert for Harvard Graphics (August 1989)
The concept of presentation graphics was still very new; Harvard Graphics allowed you to mix clip art, text in multiple fonts, graphics images, and charts into a set of presentation slides.
An advert for Harvard Graphics 3.0 (August 1991)
A 3-page ad from November 1991
For a while there really wasn't any competition that provided all the features of Harvard Graphics, and SPC enjoyed a steady revenue stream from this product alone. Windows was ultimately the writing on the wall, since all software was now graphical by nature. With the introduction of Microsoft Powerpoint and Lotus Freelance, SPC struggled to move HG to the Windows 3.0 platform, and by the time it launched it was too little, too late. In 1994, the company cut its workforce by 50% and Gibbons stepped down as CEO.