A career in the oil industry was beckoning
Adam Osborne - the unlikely entrepreneur
Osborne was born in Thailand, but as a teenager was shipped back to England where he studied chemical engineering at Birmingham University - one of the leading schools for that discipline - and would later do his doctorate at the University of Delaware before joining Shell Oil in California. However, if a career in the oil industry was beckoning, Osborne had other thoughts - he had been bitten by the computer bug.
Like others before and after him Osborne was enthralled by the concept of computers but appalled by the lack of documentation to go with them. Thinking he could do better himself, Osborne founded a company, Osborne and Associates, that specialised in computer documentation. His first book, An Introduction to Microcomputers, was published in 1972 and would take-off, expanding into two volumes and growing from there.
Written in an approachable style which included useful features, including being printed in "boldface and lightface type in order to let you bypass information you already know and dwell on information you do not yet understand". To set himself up as the arbiter of what the reader may, or may not, understand was, as it turned out, an all-too typical Osborne touch - he never lacked chutzpah, bordering on arrogant.
By 1977 the Osborne imprint had expanded to 40 titles when the US publisher, McGraw-Hill, came calling and bought the list which became Osborne/McGraw-Hill, an imprint that still exists but as McGraw-Hill Osborne.
