OWL was founded in 1984 by five former employees of ICL (Ian Ritchie, Stuart Harper, Gordon Dougan, Richard Stonehouse and Dave MacLaren) who had previously worked at ICL's Scottish Development Centre at Dalkeith Palace until its closure the previous year.
The American subsidiary, then headed by ex-Microsoft executive Alan M. Boyd achieved considerable attention (particularly from Esther Dyson who understood its potential) but was eventually sidelined when Apple elected to bundle their Hypercard product free with every Macintosh.
[citation needed] OWL developed and supported Guide, a pioneering hypertext authoring system for the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows, originally conceived at the University of Kent.
[citation needed] OWL was bought for over £7m in 1989 by Matsushita Electric Industrial (MEI) of Japan and became Panasonic Office Workstations Ltd..
A number of spin-off companies were formed by ex-OWL employees, including InfoAccess (a management buy-out of OWL International Inc.), Electrum Multimedia Ltd.,[1] CAPDM Limited, Data Discoveries Ltd. and Digital Bridges Ltd. On 30 April 2005 Panasonic OWL was shut down.