The concepts of the PostScript language were seeded in 1976
when John Warnock was working at Evans & Sutherland, a computer
graphics company. At that time John Warnock was developing an
interpreter for a large three-dimensional graphics database of New
York harbor. Warnock conceived the Design System language to
process the graphics.
Concurrently, researchers at Xerox PARC had developed the first laser
printer and had recognized the need for a standard means of defining
page images. In 1975-76 Bob Sproull and William Newman developed
the Press format, which was eventually used in the Xerox Starsystem
to drive laser printers. But Press, a data format rather than a
language, lacked flexibility, and PARC mounted the Interpress effort
to create a successor.
In 1978 Warnock left Evans & Sutherland and joined Xerox PARC to
work with Martin Newell. They rewrote Design System to create the
interpretive language, J & M or JaM[1] (for "John and Martin") which
was used for VLSI design and the investigation of type and graphics
printing. This work later evolved and expanded into
the Interpress language.