dtSearch Corp was founded by David Thede;[1][2][3] the company started research and development in text retrieval in 1988 and incorporated in Virginia in 1991 as D T Software.
Marketing of dtSearch 1.0 a DOS Text Retrieval software product began in the first quarter of 1991.
The product was featured in an article entitled "Text Retrieval Software" in an early edition of PC Magazine[4] as a shareware alternative to the commercial products reviewed; these included ISYS, ZyIndex, Strix, askSam, ideaList, Assassin PC, Folio Views and Lotus SmartText.
In the first few years after its initial release, dtSearch was an end-user application only.
Then, in 1994, Symantec approached dtSearch about including its search technology into one of the first applications for 32-bit Windows; the dtSearch end-user application was developed into a Dynamic-link library (DLL) which Symantec embedded in Norton Navigator, which was released alongside Microsoft’s initial release of its 32-bit Windows operating system, Windows 95.