Flash History

1993, Charlie Jackson, Jonathan Gay,
and Michelle Welsh started a small
Software company called Future
Wave and created their first product
SmartSketch. A drawing application,
SmartSketch was designed to make
creating computer graphics as simple
as drawing on paper. Although
SmartSketch was an innovative drawing
application, it didn't gain enough of a
foothold in its market. As the internet
began to thrive, FutureWave began to
realize the potential for a vector-based
web animation tool that might easily
challenge Macromedia's often slow to
download Shockwave technology. In 1995,
FutureWave modified SmartSketch by
adding frame-by-frame animation
features and re-released it as FutureSplash
Animator on Macintosh and PC. By that
time, the company had added a second
programmer Robert Tatsumi, an artist
Adam Grofcsik ,and a PR specialist
Ralph Mittman.