Anyone who followed the world of technology in the 1990s certainly knows the figure above. He stamped the packaging of an antivirus that bore his name, a brand that still exists today, even though he himself is no longer involved. “The Norton”, as many called him, is Peter Norton, one of the pioneers of home PCs and software programming.
This story began in the 1970s, when the programmer specializing in mainframes and minicomputers worked in the aerospace industry. After being fired from Boeing in 1981, Norton became interested in domestic microcomputers and, by making a mistake common to all of us, he ended up creating the first program that would put his name in evidence.
Digging around in one of the first PCs IBM released, he accidentally deleted a file and started looking for ways to recover the data from the hard drive.
Thus was born UnErase, a success among the programmer’s friends who, later, in 1982, would be the highlight of Norton Utilities. The suite launched in 1982 was one of the first on the market and featured software that tested PC resources and allowed manipulating system elements, in addition to displaying hidden files and interacting with printers and floppy disk readers. There was also the birth of Peter Norton Computing, which had himself as its only initial employee.
Meetings of programming enthusiasts and electronics stores were his means of dissemination, where Peter Norton left pamphlets with handwritten notes. Then came his second opportunity: writing technical manuals for IBM PCs — again, it’s important to remember that we were in the early days of computing, with aficionados representing most of an audience with little access to information.
Between columns for specialized magazines, lectures and new software, Peter Norton went from being a specialist to becoming a reference, a title that would become a constant in his career.
Amid manuals and software suites, his company reached the $1 million mark in sales in 1983, with three employees: himself, who did all the writing and programming work, and two packaging workers. He would hire his first technology colleague only the following year and, in 1985, new opportunities would come with the opening of a business department, also composed of only one person.
In 1988, the company reached a turnover of US$ 15 million and was elected one of the 500 that grew the most in the United States. Peter Norton was recognized as entrepreneur of the year by Ernst & Young (then called Arthur Young & Co.), a year before “professionalization”, with the hiring of a CEO and transfer to the board position, with a clear objective: expand the company’s growth and maintain the name as one of the main references in the technology market, which was also at a very fast pace.
The antivirus man, behind the scenes
It’s curious that, when Peter Norton became the cover guy for one of the main antivirus options on the market, he wasn’t even ahead of his own company anymore.
After the release of different iterations of its suite of applications and the addition of new software such as disk backup and recovery tools that also become wildly successful, as well as a Macintosh version, comes the dream of every fledgling tech company: a purchase proposal.
After posting $25 million in sales in 1989, Norton Computing was sold to Symantec for $70 million, with the founder becoming a member of the technology company’s board of directors. Norton Antivirus, whose brand still exists today with variations and naming different products, is launched in 1991 in a DOS version, without having Peter among its programmers, but carrying his name as a way of giving the credibility and weight that a security solution needed .
The image that all of us older people know came in 1996, when the security application was released for Windows 95, in addition to the well-known DOS edition.
“Norton” appears with its sleeves rolled up and arms crossed, ready to take care of computers that were just beginning to know about the existence of viruses, which at that time served to corrupt files, turn off PCs and carry out other destructive actions, without malicious purposes and, mainly , today’s finances.
The photo is not the same, but the pose was also widely recognized in the technology market. Before becoming the face of Symantec’s antivirus, Peter Norton also appeared with his arms crossed and sleeves rolled up in Peter Norton’s Guide to Programming on the IBM PC. The guide, known as the “pink shirt book”, was launched in 1985; the posture even became a trademark of his company.
Variations would continue to appear with each new release of Symantec’s security and utilities applications, complete with a stethoscope around the neck or arm resting on a tube monitor. A close-up of Peter Norton was on the cover of versions of Norton Utilities while he appeared juggling the Norton System Works CD-ROMs, the mother package that united the utilities and also the access control and antivirus protection solutions focused on the corporate market.
Peter Norton’s photos would be used on the antivirus cover that bore his name for five years, between 1996 and 2001, but the name remains today. He even came to designate what was left of Symantec, after an agreement with Broadcom, in August 2019, divided it into two; the technology giant acquired the corporate software division, while the security products division would now serve as NortonLifeLock. In 2022, it would become Gen Digital after merging with another big name in the industry: Avast.
The brand remains one of the most remembered in the antivirus segment, with recognition that rivals only that of another man, John McAfee, who died in 2021 and not involved with the suite of applications that bore his name since 1994.
In addition to PCs, Norton products also have versions for cell phones and servers, going beyond antivirus and also offering packages with VPNs, performance optimizers, password vaults, backups and protection of online browsing or access to emails.
beyond technology
In 2002, Peter Norton became a major investor in semiconductor company Acorn Technologies and was appointed to its board of directors. In 2003, he founded financial services company eChinaCash alongside Ron Posner, the first CEO of Norton Computing. He is also on the boards of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles Museum of Art and the California Institute of Technology, and on the executive committee of the Guggenheim Museum.
Despite having spent so many years with his face stamped on products with millions of consumers and programming reference books, Norton has a private life. In 2000, he ended a 17-year marriage to Eileen Harris, with whom he also created a philanthropic foundation; he remarried in 2017 to financier Gwen Adams, with whom he lives in New York, in the United States.
