Share Charles 'Chuck' Geschke, who co-founded Adobe, a graphics and software publishing company, with John Warnock in 1982, died this past Friday at age 81 of cancer. Notably he was instrumental in developing the Portable Document Format technology, better known as PDFs. âThis is a huge loss for the entire Adobe community and the technology industry, for whom he has been a guide and hero for decades,â Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen wrote in an email to the company's employees. Geschke was born on September 11, 1939. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and was raised by his mother, a paralegal, and father â a photo engraver who produced the metal plates that clamped onto presses to produce images for books, magazines and newspapers. Adobe's products made the technology his father used obsolete.