By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
Sausalito’s Marinship area is home to our working waterfront, and it also serves as an incubator for technology innovators. But that’s nothing new.
One early tech startup, Autodesk, was founded in Marin by John Walker and 12 other programmers in 1982. The package they created, called Autocad, was a software application for computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting. Autocad “quietly became one of the most successful software products in history,” according to the L.A. Times. AutoCAD allows users to do drafting in two dimensions and images can be created in three dimensions. Either a mouse or a digitizer can be used to create the images. This capability had been available in large computer systems, at a cost of $100,000 or more. But AutoCAD made it available to small firms and independents for as little as $5,000.
In September 1985, this newspaper quoted an article in a contemporary issue of InfoWorld that “AutoCAD now constitutes more than 40 percent of the market for similar devices on personal computers. The company went public two months ago.” At that time, Autodesk split up its bulging enterprise between its Shoreline Highway headquarters and an office building at Bridgeway and Coloma. By then the number of employees had grown to 150, Marinscope stated, “and Autodesk's original headquarters on Shoreline Highway became obsolete” so Autodesk relocated to “more plush quarters in Marina Plaza. The company fills most of the three-story building nearest the water."
By mid-1986, the company had grown to 255 employees with annual sales of over $40 million. That year, Walker resigned as chairman and president, continuing to work as a programmer.
In June 1986 the 50,000th package of Autodesk’s CAD software was shipped and this paper reported: “To mark the occasion, Autodesk donated a complete workstation to the purchaser of the 50,000th package — a telecommunications firm in Bakersfield.”
By 1991, Autodesk, then the world's fifth largest computer company, had begun transferring some of its operations to Petaluma. At the end of the year, the Petaluma Argus Courier announced that other divisions would also be moved north: “The new warehouse and production facilities will be located at 9 North McDowell Blvd. The move will put all of the Operations departments, Purchasing, Customer Service and Product Quality Assurance, in one place.”
Now headquartered at 1 Market St. in San Francisco, Autodesk continues to evolve. The company website notes that the firm is “exploring the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up and augment artist workflows.”
By the way, when setting out to research Autodesk, I turned to AI, specifically ChatGPT, to see if it might write this column for me. After I typed in Autodesk Sausalito, this was a bot’s reply:
“While Autodesk has a rich history in the technology and software industry, it doesn't have a notable historical connection to Sausalito that I'm aware of… I don't have detailed information about specific office locations or events in Sausalito related to Autodesk beyond what you've mentioned…
If you have more specific questions or if you're looking for detailed historical information about Autodesk's activities in Sausalito, you may want to consult historical records [or] local archives…”
Score: AI: Zero, old newspapers: 1.
PHOTO BY LARRY CLINTON
Marina Plaza today, at 2320 and 2330 Marinship Way.