Back in the late 1980s, I worked for a company called Three D Graphics. They made presentation graphics software, starting with a program called Perspective, which uses (of course) 3-D graphics. The original code came from a couple of Macintosh fans who immigrated from Germany: Kai Krauss (who later became famous for Kai's Power Tools) and Martin Schmitt. Kai did the artistic stuff and Martin did the 3D math and the programming. A financial wizard named Elmer Easton invested in the company and became CEO. The company used to be based in Pacific Palisades, California but now is in the Century City part of Los Angeles. I wrote the first Windows version of Perspective, for Windows 2.11 (this is going back some!). I left the company in 1989 to take a job in the languages group at Microsoft.

From their website, it looks like Dan Weingart still works there, and maybe also Jon Henderson, who left to work at Microsoft for awhile and then returned to Three D Graphics. Other employees from the 1980s that I remember are fellow software developers Mark Riley and Keith Kiyohara, Vice President Tom Budlong and corporate secretary Celia Cushing-Brawley.

I received shares of common stock in the company, which is privately held. They were almost bought out by a public company in 1998 (which would have made my shares saleable), but the deal fell through. I've held these shares for 15 years now. I've been thinking of selling them to a friend for $1 so as to get a tax loss, but the company is still in business and who knows, it may yet be worth something. I talked to Elmer Easton a year ago and he urged me to hang onto them. Anyone else in a similar boat - got suggestions? Perhaps we could start a stockholders Yahoo! email group. Email me or leave a comment.