Every time you install an app or open a file, you’re using a technology that originates a little closer to home than you might think. The ZIP file – a now-ubiquitous way of compressing data so it can be reconstructed without losing information – was invented in the suburbs of Milwaukee in 1986 by a young programmer named Phil Katz. Since, his creation has found its way into every part of the tech world, and the company he founded, PKWARE, remains in Milwaukee but has a global reach.
“Phil Katz was a visionary,” says Jason Dobbs, PKWARE’s chief technology officer. “The guy had a knack for technology, but also had a really good eye for the business and getting the software out there.”
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Katz, who died in 2000 at age 37, put the ZIP file specifications into the public domain early on for other developers and companies to use, hoping to “democratize encryption.” By the end of the 1990s, PKWARE products were in use by more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies. “Because he also opened [ZIP file technology] up to the rest of the computing environment, that allowed the technology he created to be used in places and ways that I’m sure he’d never thought of,” says Jim Peterson, chief scientist at PKWARE, who has been with the company for 29 years.
Today, PKWARE has around 180 employees around the world, with its main office in the Third Ward. Among the clients for its data security technologies, including intellectual property protection and email security, range from health care to banks to financial technology companies. And while PKWARE has evolved well beyond the ZIP file, it continues to maintain its standard specifications for the world. “[The ZIP file] has been in outer space. It’s been on submarines,” says Peterson. “It’s been pretty much throughout the human-inhabited universe.”
