Harlequin was a technology company based in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, UK and

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

. It specialized in

application software Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

for printing, graphics,

law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of the government or other social institutions who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by investigating, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms gove ...

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, and in implementations of

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

s. Harlequin employees sometimes referred to themselves as "The 'Late Binding' company" and the firm eventually evolved into a

think tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...

for advanced technologies. After Global Graphics purchased Harlequin, they spun off the application groups for

Lisp Lisp (historically LISP, an abbreviation of "list processing") is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized Polish notation#Explanation, prefix notation. Originally specified in the late 1950s, ...

(AI), and

Xanalys Xanalys Limited is an independent software company founded in January 2009 when the Analytics and Investigative Management division of Tiburon Inc. was acquired by a group of former Xanalys management and engineering staff based in the UK. Vario ...

, and they spun off the Harlequin Dylan team as Functional Objects. Global Graphics acquired Harlequin mainly for the

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

technologies, and it still continues to develop and market them under the Harlequin name.

Think tank products

Harlequin had two main lines of business: * Digital

prepress Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing. The prepress process includes the preparation of artwork for press, media ...

(mainly ScriptWorks, a

language compatible

raster image processor A raster image processor (RIP) is a component used in a printing system which produces a raster image also known as a bitmap. Such a bitmap is used by a later stage of the printing system to produce the printed output. The input may be a page ...

(RIP), now selling under the name Harlequin RIP) * Modern language development environments:

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

s and

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

s (IDEs) for

(

LispWorks LispWorks is computer software, a proprietary implementation and integrated development environment (IDE) for the programming language Common Lisp. LispWorks was developed by the UK software company Harlequin Ltd., and first published in 1989. H ...

), ML (MLWorks), and Dylan (DylanWorks) Other products included data analysis tools created using

, the Lisp IDE. The

structure of Harlequin can also be recognized via the development of a flexible and modular memory management system, the Memory Pool System (MPS). MPS was designed to support: * A wide range of requirements from high-speed manual memory management, to complex garbage collection with many different types of reference * Two products: ScriptWorks PostScript RIP, and the Harlequin Dylan compiler and IDE for the Dylan language

Think tank spin-offs

In January 2005 employees founded the independently owned

Limited to focus on the

business. Several of Harlequin's other assets and technologies have also been acquired and

open sourced Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

by companies founded by former Harlequin employees. * Functional Objects Inc., was founded in 1999 to continue developing and producing the Dylan IDE. In 2004, all code was open sourced to The Gwydion Maintainers. They renamed the IDE to Open Dylan. * Ravenbrook Limited acquired the Memory Management Reference, a public resource on

memory management Memory management (also dynamic memory management, dynamic storage allocation, or dynamic memory allocation) is a form of Resource management (computing), resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory manag ...

and

garbage collection Waste collection is a part of the process of waste management. It is the transfer of solid waste from the point of use and disposal to the point of treatment or landfill. Waste collection also includes the curbside collection of recyclable ...

, the Memory Pool System, a flexible memory manager and

garbage collector A waste collector, also known as a garbage man, garbage collector, trashman (in the U.S), binman or dustman (in the UK), is a person employed by a public or private enterprise to collect and dispose of municipal solid waste (refuse) and recycla ...

(now

), and MLWorks, a

Standard ML Standard ML (SML) is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, High-level programming language, high-level, Modular programming, modular, Functional programming, functional programming language with compile-time type checking and t ...

compiler and

(also open sourced).

History

Harlequin Limited was founded in 1987 by Jo Marks in

, England, and the first offices were located in the founder's home in Cambridge. The firm later moved to an office on Station Road, Cambridge, then in 1989 relocated to Barrington Hall, in the village of

Barrington, Cambridgeshire Barrington is a small village and civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. The village is about south-west of Cambridge, between Haslingfield and Shepreth. History The parish of Barrington is roughly a tr ...

, near Cambridge, which became the permanent company headquarters. Expansion followed, and Harlequin Limited became The Harlequin Group Limited, with wholly owned subsidiaries in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

(UK) (Harlequin Limited), the United States (Harlequin, Inc. - office opened in

in 1993) and Australia (Harlequin Australia Pty Limited). The firm acquired in February 1995 the rights to the Lisp-related technology Lucid

Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S2018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperli ...

of Lucid Inc., that went out of business in summer 1994 due to financial hardships. Many of the newly hired American Lisp staff had formerly worked for two other Lisp companies which had failed previously:

Lucid Inc. Lucid Incorporated was a Menlo Park, California, Menlo Park, California-based computer software development company. Founded by Richard P. Gabriel in 1984, it went bankrupt in 1994. History The first CEO was Tony Slocum, formerly of IntelliCorp ...

and

Symbolics Symbolics, Inc., is a privately held American computer software maker that acquired the assets of the former manufacturing company of the identical name and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp (programming language), Lisp sy ...

. In 1997, the group company became Harlequin Group plc. At its peak in 1997–1998 the firm had over 300 staff, with offices in:

, England (including Barrington Hall and

Longstanton Longstanton is a village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England, north-west of Cambridge city centre. Longstanton occupies . Longstanton was created in 1953 from the two parishes of Long Stanton All Saints and Long Stanton St Michae ...

);

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

;

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

;

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park ( ) is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, California, Eas ...

, and several other places. Due to failed expansion plans, the firm was declared bankrupt in summer 1999 and went into

administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal: the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. ** Administrative assistant, traditionally known as a se ...

. It was acquired by Global Graphics, primarily for the

technologies, which Global Graphics continues to develop and market under the Harlequin name (in 2006). Global Graphics created a subsidiary

for the data analysis and

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 firm continues to sell investigation and analysis tools developed by Harlequin originally (such as Link Explorer and Powercase) to a worldwide market.

References

{{Lisp programming language Lisp (programming language) software companies Defunct software companies of the United Kingdom Dylan (programming language) Software companies disestablished in 1999 Companies based in Cambridge 1999 disestablishments in Massachusetts