Charles Geschke, the co-founder of Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) who helped develop Portable Document Format technology — the PDF — died at age 81 on Friday in California.

Geschke began working at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center after getting his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University. At Xerox, he met John Warnock. Both left the company in 1982 to found Adobe and started developing software together.

Besides the now-indispensable PDF, Geschke had a hand in Adobe's many transformative software programs during his career, including Acrobat, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

“Chuck and John Warnock developed groundbreaking software that has revolutionized how people create and communicate," Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said in a statement to employees, according to the Assocated Press.

In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded Geschke and Warnock the National Medal of Technology.

In 1992, Geschke survived a kidnapping. He was held at gunpoint in his office and taken to Hollister, California, for four days.

Geschke was freed after a suspect, found with $650,000 in ransom money, took police to the location where he was being held.

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia

Image by Esa Riutta from Pixabay.

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