High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The company began in 1978 as a private consulting firm doing technical writing, based in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area. In 1984, it began to retain publishing rights on manuals created for Unix vendors. A few 70-page "Nutshell Handbooks" were well-received, but the focus remained on the consulting business until in 1988, the public showed great interest at a conference for its preliminary Xlib manuals, which alerted the company that there was an under-served audience for their kind of books.