Charles Geschke, the co-founder of the major software company Adobe Inc. who helped develop Portable Document Format technology (PDFs) died at the age of 81, media reported on Sunday.
Geschke, who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Los Altos, died Friday, according to the company.
On his part, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said Geschke "sparked the desktop publishing revolution."
"This is a huge loss for the entire Adobe community and the technology industry, for whom he has been a guide and hero for decades," he wrote in an email to the company's employees.
"As co-founders of Adobe, Chuck and John Warnock developed ground-breaking software that has revolutionized how people create and communicate," he added.
Additionally, he noted that Geschke and Warnock were responsible for transformative software inventions, including PDF, Acrobat, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Photoshop.
In 1992, Geschke, widely known as Chuck, was kidnapped in an incident that made national headlines, as he was held at gunpoint in his office and taken to Hollister, California, for about four days.
He was freed after a suspect, found with $650,000 (£470,000) in ransom money, took police to the location where he was being held, according to Associated Press' reporters.
In 2009, former U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Chuck and Warnock the National Medal of Technology.
His wife, Nan Geschke told Mercury News that he was really a humble man.
"He was very proud of his success, of course, but he was very circumspect about how much he had to do with that," she stressed.
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