Harlequin (software Company) - History

History

Harlequin Limited was founded in 1987 by Jo Marks in Cambridge, England, and the first offices were located in the founder's home in Cambridge. The company later moved to an office on Station Road, Cambridge, then in 1989 relocated to Barrington Hall, in the village of Barrington near Cambridge, which became the permanent company headquarters.

Expansion followed, and Harlequin Limited became The Harlequin Group Limited, with wholly owned subsidiaries in the UK (Harlequin Limited), the USA (Harlequin, Inc. - office opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1993) and Australia (Harlequin Australia Pty Limited). The company acquired in February 1995 the rights to the Lisp-related technology Lucid Common Lisp of Lucid, Inc., that went out of business the summer before due to financial hardships. Many of the newly hired American Lisp staff had previously worked for Lucid Inc. and Symbolics, other Lisp companies which had previously failed. In 1997 the group company became Harlequin Group plc.

At its peak in 1997-1998 the company had over 300 staff. Harlequin had offices in: Cambridge, England (including Barrington Hall and Longstanton); Edinburgh; Manchester; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Menlo Park, California, and several other places.

Due to failed expansion plans, the company was declared bankrupt in the summer of 1999 and went into administration. It was acquired by Global Graphics, primarily for the PostScript technologies, which Global Graphics continues to develop and market under the Harlequin name (in 2006). Global Graphics created a subsidiary Xanalys for the data analysis and LispWorks businesses. In November 2006, Global moved from Barrington Hall to Cambourne Business Park.

In September 2005 CompuDyne Corporation acquired Xanalys which operated for several years as part of Tiburon, Inc. the Public Safety and Justice division of CompuDyne. In January 2009 Xanalys was acquired by the UK staff based in Manchester and Cambridge. The company continues to sell investigation and analysis tools originally developed by Harlequin (such as Link Explorer and Powercase) to a worldwide market.