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《纽约时报》和《经济学人》也一样，有“讣告”这一版。 4月23日《纽约时报》的讣告就介绍了一个这样一个人：Chuck Geschke, Father of Desktop Publishing, Dies at 81. Chuck Geschke是谁呢？这个名字你可能不熟悉，但如果说pdf， Adobe你可能熟悉。 If you sent a PDF on your computer today, thank him. In 1980, he and a colleague created a way of sending digital documents to a printer, starting a company, Adobe. 今天，如果你把一个pdf文件发到电脑桌面上，那就感谢他。1980年，查克·葛什克和同事创造了一种可以把电子文档直接传送到打印机上的方法。 随后，二人成立了一家公司，名叫-Adobe. Chuck Geschke, a computer scientist and entrepreneur who helped develop fundamental ways of creating, sharing and printing digital documents in the early years of the personal computer, notably the now-ubiquitous PDF, died on Friday at his home in Los Altos, Calif. He was 81. 查克·葛什克周五于家中去世，享年81岁。他是一位电脑科学家、创业者。 在个人电脑的早期，他帮助开发了创建、分享和打印电子文档的方法，也就是后来人尽皆知的pdf。 这一段没有陌生词汇，但确实一个典型的长句。分析长难句，找到句子主语和谓语就迎刃而解了。 His wife, Nan, said the cause was cancer. 他的妻子称，查克·葛什克因癌症而去世。 In 1980, at Xerox PARC, a research lab in Silicon Valley, Dr. Geschke and his fellow researcher John Warnock created a way of sending documents between a computer and a printer. Their bosses at Xerox said the company could get the technology to market in about seven years. Dr. Geschke (pronounced GESH-kee) and Dr. Warnock, believing they would miss a huge opportunity if they did not move faster, left Xerox and founded their own company, calling it Adobe. 1980年，在硅谷的一个叫做施乐帕克研究中心，葛什克和他的同事约翰.沃诺克开发了一种从电脑向打印机发送文件的方法。 他们实验室的老板说，会让这项技术在7年内上市。但是葛什克和沃诺克认为如果不快速行动，他们就要失去先机。 于是两人离开了这个实验室，自己成立了公司，取名Adobe。
Today Adobe is one of the world’s largest software companies, with a market value of $245 billion. But the company’s rapid rise did not come without personal hardship. In 1992, two men kidnapped Dr. Geschke at gunpoint in the parking lot at Adobe headquarters and held him in chains for four days at a rented house in Hollister, Calif. His family agreed to pay a ransom of $650,000, but after his daughter, Kathy, left the money at a designated drop point, F.B.I. agents captured the kidnappers and rescued Dr. Geschke. 今天Adobe公司是世界上最大的软件公司之一，市值达到了2450亿美元。但公司的快速崛起并不是一帆风顺的。 1992年，两个人在Adobe总部的停车场持枪绑架了葛什克，并把他囚禁在了一个出租屋长达4天。 绑匪索要赎金65万美元，葛什克的女儿把赎金放到了绑匪指定的地点后，FBI探员抓住了绑匪，救了葛什克。 ✦market value 市值 ✦ransom 赎金 ✦pay ransom 支付赎金 ✦drop point 放置点 President Barack Obama awarded him and Dr. Warnock the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2009. In addition to his wife and daughter, Dr. Geschke is survived by two sons, Peter and John, and seven grandchildren. 2009年奥巴马总统授予葛什克和沃诺克国家科技与创新奖章。 除了妻子和女儿，葛什克生前还有2个儿子和7个孙辈。 ✦survive 幸存于 ✦If you survive sb，指你比别人活得长 ✦而如果说you is survived by 就是指“别人比你活得长”，其实就是某人的遗孀，遗属之类的。 ✦而相应的survivor 除了（灾难等）幸存者，还指“家中尚活着的人” 。 Though he helped build one of the world’s richest companies, Dr. Geschke did not consider himself a businessman. Rather, he said, he saw himself as an engineer. “Engineers dream of building something that millions of people will use; that’s their ultimate goal,” he said during an event at the Computer History Museum in 2017. “I don’t think many engineers are motivated by money. They’re motivated by having an impact.” 尽管他帮助创立了世界上最富有的公司之一，但葛什克从不认为自己是个商人。相反，他认为自己是个工程师。 2017年，他在电脑历史博物馆讲话中说到：“工程师梦想创立几百万人会使用的东西，这就是他们的终极目标。”“他们不为钱所驱，他们要创造一种影响。” 工程师貌似都对钱有种蔑视感，乔布斯也曾说，他创立苹果不是为了钱，而是为了“make a dent in the universe”-在世界上留下自己的影响。 |
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