Office Workstations Limited
Office Workstations Limited was a British software company based in Edinburgh.
OWL was founded in 1984 by five former employees of ICL who had previously worked at ICL's Scottish Development Centre at Dalkeith Palace until its closure the previous year.
The following year, OWL International Inc., a United States subsidiary, was formed in Seattle. The American subsidiary, then headed by ex-Microsoft executive Alan M. Boyd achieved considerable attention but was eventually sidelined when Apple elected to bundle their Hypercard product free with every Macintosh. This caused considerable consternation amongst Apple's developer community who became wary of Apple's motives for requiring developers to submit product designs for approval.
Hypertext Pioneer
OWL developed and supported Guide, a pioneering hypertext authoring system for the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows, originally conceived at the University of Kent.Guide was likely the first ever commercially available hypertext browser, when it was introduced on the Macintosh in 1986, nearly a decade before hypertext became the standard method of developing and browsing the Internet.