Defunct American software company
Berkeley Systems
was a
San Francisco Bay Area
software
company co-founded in 1987 by
Wes Boyd
and
Joan Blades
. It made money early on by performing contract work for the
National Institutes of Health
, specifically in making modifications to the Macintosh so that it could be used by partially sighted or blind people. Several of these Access
[1]
programs were licensed by
Apple Computer
and added to the operating system. Perhaps the most ambitious of these technologies was a program that could read the Macintosh screen, called
outSPOKEN
, which won a technology award from the
Smithsonian
in 1990.
The first commercial success for Berkeley Systems was a
virtual desktop
product for the
Macintosh
called
Stepping Out
. Given the small size of the first Macintosh screens, this product had some use and the idea was widely copied. The much bigger success was
After Dark
, a modular
screen saver
that included flying toasters, and the first of its kind to be sold. The idea was brought to Berkeley Systems by Jack Eastman and Patrick Beard. Eastman was later put in charge of software development at Berkeley Systems.
Berkeley Systems' best-selling product, the trivia game
You Don't Know Jack
, was developed by
Jellyvision
, based on their award-winning children's educational film "The Mind's Treasure Chest". You Don't Know Jack brought that program's model of interactive learning, engaging structure and pacing, and host character into the commercial mainstream. It also brought graphics, sound editing, and marketing to Berkeley; production of the show continued at Jellyvision's Chicago studios.
They also made other lesser-known software titles, such as
Launch Pad
, a desktop replacement for kids, and Expresso Calendar and Address Book.
[2]
Based in the old
Pacific Bell
building on Rose Street at
Shattuck Avenue
in
Berkeley, California
, Berkeley Systems grew to 120 employees and US$30 million annual revenue before it was acquired by the
Sierra On-Line
division of
CUC International
in 1997 for $13.8 million.
[3]
Vivendi Universal
’s subsequent acquisition of Sierra, and a host of similar enterprises, enjoined diverse competing sales and marketing departments with one sole directive: sell Web banner advertisements. As a result, Berkeley Systems became the U.S. headquarters of French-owned Flipside.com. In early 2000, Berkeley Systems was folded into the fledgling Los Angeles?based gambling site iWin.com, per the terms of that site's acquisition by Vivendi.
The toasters were the subject of two lawsuits, the
first
in 1993,
Berkeley Systems vs
Delrina
Corporation
, over a module of Delrina's
Opus 'N Bill
screen saver in which
Opus the Penguin
shoots down the toasters. Delrina later changed the wings of the toasters to propellers in order to avoid infringing the
trademark
. The second case was brought in 1994 by the 1960s rock group
Jefferson Airplane
who claimed that the toasters were a copy of the winged toasters featured on the cover of their 1973 album
Thirty Seconds Over Winterland
. The case was dismissed, because the cover art had not been registered as a trademark by the group prior to Berkeley Systems' release of the screen saver.
[4]
Boyd and Blades went on to found the
liberal
political group
MoveOn.org
in 1998. Blades also later co-founded MomsRising.org with
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner
in 2006.
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