Acanthus 50-year history: Part One 1967-2000

Acanthus 50-year history: Part One 1967-2000

1967 The Acanthus Press established

The Company was established in 1967. It began its life in a small premises offering conventional  typesetting and artwork and printing with limited print finishing.

Linotype-Paul introduce medium cost CRT typesetting with Linotron 505.

  • 1974 The four-color machine Speedmaster 72 V in the 52x72cm format is introduced.
  • 1977  Xerox launch digital laser printing with Xerox 9700 printer.
  • 1980 The Ethernet specifications are published.
  • 1982 Adobe is founded.
  • 1984 The Apple Macintosh is launched, Adobe releases PostScript, Linotype introduces the Linotronic 300 imagesetter; DTP launched at Seybold Seminars by Apple, Adobe and Aldus.
  • 1985 The Apple LaserWriter and Aldus PageMaker start the desktop publishing revolution.
  • 1987 Quark launches QuarkXPress 1.0, Adobe Illustrator 1.0 ships, Linotype starts making PostScript typefaces.
  • 1988 Aldus releases FreeHand 1.0.

1990 Change of ownership

The company traded under the founding ownership until it was purchased in 1990.

  • Photoshop brings colour to the desktop when introduced as Barneyscan XP together with desktop Barneyscan colour scanner.
  • Tim Berners-Lee introduces first web client and server and launches the World Wide Web internet capability.

1991 Introduction of desktop publishing to Acanthus

  • Apple and Microsoft teamed up to launch TrueType, Adobe releases PostScript level 2, Photoshop 1.07 adds support for CMYK, the Fiery RIP for digital copiers is EFI’s first product, the Heidelberg GTO-DI supports direct imaging technology.
  • The World Wide Web was born.

1992 Acanthus Purchased A Matchprint proofing system…

1993 AND Shuttleworth Management Information System

  • During 1996 turnover had increased significantly and double day shift patterns were introduced as the Company continued to expand into new areas and print runs became longer.
  • Agfa introduces Cristalraster, baby drum scanners hit the market, digital presses like the Indigo E-Print 100 and Xeikon DCP-1 storm the market, Windows NT is ready to take on Unix, ICC is founded.

1997 Creation of Finishline the sister finishing company of Acanthus

To this point Acanthus had sourced most of its finishing, so in 1997 a sister company ‘Finish Line’ was created.
New guillotine, folders and a stitch-line facility were purchased and additional factory space was taken to accommodate, doubling the original factory size.

  • Adobe and Microsoft announce OpenType.
  • Heidelberg acquires Linotype-Hell 
  • Enfoucs starts shipping PitStop 1.0, Mac OS 8 ships, websites start appearing on the internet.

1998 Purchase of FIVE colour B2 press from Roland

  • Further investment was made in 1998 with the purchase of a new 5-colour B2 Roland Press, the company moved to a 24-hour shift pattern.
  • The iMac becomes an instant classic, PostScript 3 is announced, Agfa announces the first PDF-based workflow system.