Voyager Company
The Voyager Company was a pioneer in CD-ROM production in the 1980s and early 1990s. In partnership with Janus Films, the company published The Criterion Collection, a pioneering home video collection of classic and important contemporary films on LaserDisc. It was founded in 1984 by four partners: Jon Turell, Bill Becker, Aleen Stein, and Robert Stein in Santa Monica, California, and later moved to New York City. The firm took its name from the Voyager space craft.
| Type | Software company |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1984 |
| Defunct | 1997 |
| Fate | Tax Dormitory |
| Successor | The Criterion Collection |
| Headquarters | United States |
| Products | LaserDiscs, Interactive CD-ROM, The Criterion Collection |
In 1994, the partnership was diluted by selling 20% of it to the von Holzbrinck Publishing Group, a German holding company. In 1997, the Holzbrinck Group withdrew with its 20%, the name "Voyager," and half of the CD-ROM rights. Robert Stein took the other half of the CD-ROM rights and the Toolkit rights. This left the Criterion Collection in the possession of three of the original partners, each with a third: Aleen Stein, the Becker family, and the Turell family.
Releases
LaserDiscs
- De Italia
- The Great Quake of '89 (in partnership with ABC News Interactive)
- The National Gallery of Art
- Devo: The Complete Truth About De-Evolution
- The Residents: Twenty Twisted Questions (Part 1/2)
- Louvre
- Theatre of the Imagination: Radio Stories by Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre (1988, ISBN 0-931393-90-6)[1]
- To New Horizons: Ephemeral Films 1931–1945
- The Vancouver Disc
- Vienna
- You Can't Get There From Here: Ephemeral Films 1945–1960
- The Voyager Videostack
- The Inland Sea
- Call It Home: The House That Private Enterprise Built
CD-ROMs
- A Hard Day's Night (Demo)
- A World Alive (Demo)
- All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis By Morton Subotnick (Demo)
- Amanda Stories (Demo)
- American Poetry The Nineteenth Century (Demo)
- Amnesty Interactive (Demo)
- Baseball's Greatest Hits (Demo)
- The Beat Experience
- The CD Companion to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony CD-ROM (Demo)
- The CD Companion To Mozart's Dissonant Quartet (Demo)
- The CD Companion to Dvorak The New World Symphony (Demo)
- The CD Companion to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (Demo)
- Cinema Volta – Weird Science & Childhood Memory
- Circus!: An Interactive Cartoon (Demo)
- Comic Book Confidential (Demo)
- The Complete Maus (Demo)
- Count Down
- Criterion Goes to the Movies (Demo)
- The Day After Trinity (Demo)
- Dazzleoids
- Ephemeral Films 1931–1960 (incorporating two previously-released titles, To New Horizons and You Can't Get There From Here) (Demo)
- Exotic Japan – A Guide to Japanese Culture and Language by Nikki Yokokura
- First Emperor of China (Demo)
- First Person: "Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine" Donald Norman, three Norman books and a number of technical papers (Demo)
- First Person: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row (Demo)
- First Person: The Society of Mind, starring Dr. Marvin Minsky (Demo)
- For All Mankind (Demo)
- If Monks Had Macs... (Demo)
- Invisible Universe, starring Dr. Fiorella Terenzi
- I Photograph To Remember / Fotografio Para Recordar
- Last Chance to See (Demo)
- Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel (Clip)
- Macbeth (Demo)
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: The CD-ROM (Cancelled)
- Our Secret Century: The Darker Side of the American Dream (12 discs, 2 unreleased, of films and collateral material from Prelinger Archives)
- Painters Painting (Demo)
- Planetary Taxi
- People Weekly – 20 Amazing Years Of Pop Culture (Demo)
- Poetry in Motion (Demo)
- Poetry in Motion II
- The Residents Freak Show (Demo)
- Rodney's Wonder Window
- Sacred and Secular: The Aerial Photography of Marilyn Bridges[2]
- Salt of the Earth: A Film of Politics and Passion
- Shining Flower
- Silly Noisy House
- So I've Heard: A Collector's Guide to Compact Discs
- Stephen Jay Gould On Evolution (Demo)
- Theatre of the Imagination: Radio Stories by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre
- This Is Spinal Tap
- The Trout Quintet
- Truths & Fictions – A Journey from Documentary to Digital Photography
- Understanding McLuhan (Demo)
- With Open Eyes: Images from the Art Institute of Chicago
- The Voyager Audiostack
Floppy disks
Expanded Books series
- Jurassic Park – Crichton, Michael
- The Complete Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Adams, Douglas (EB2)
- The Complete Annotated Alice in Wonderland – Carroll, Lewis, Intro & notes by Gardner, Martin (EB1)
- Virtual Light – Gibson, William (EB52)
- Neuromancer / Count Zero / Mona Lisa Overdrive – Gibson, William (EB15)
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals – Pirsig, Robert (EB8)
- Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman – Gleick, James
- Who Built America
- A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters – L'Engle, Madeleine
- The Complete Stories, Volume 1 – Asimov, Isaac
- Invisible Man – Ellison, Ralph
- The Society of Mind – Minsky, Marvin
- Amusing Ourselves to Death – Postman, Neil and Brave New World - Huxley, Aldous
- Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, the Red Pony, The Pearl – Steinbeck, John (Floppy Disk)
References
- "Orson Welles And The Mercury Theatre On The Air – Theatre Of The Imagination: Radio Stories By Orson Welles And The Mercury Theatre (1988, Laserdisc)". Archived from the original on 2021-12-22. Retrieved 2021-12-22 – via www.discogs.com.
- "Sacred and secular". Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2016-02-29.
- History
- Amy Virshup. "The Teachings of Bob Stein". Wired. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
- "Voyager Company CD-ROM products listed on Amazon". Amazon. Retrieved 2010-01-15.