In the spring of 1991, John Warnock, then CEO of Adobe Systems, authored a paper called "The Camelot Project" that first presented his vision for the worldwide exchange of rich media documents. It's an interesting look at how new projects emerge in large corporations.

In this paper, PDF is viewed as a stop-gap measure until personal computers were powerful enough to render normal PostScript documents in real-time. Warnock then planned to migrate back to the use of PostScript for both printing and on-screen viewing. With the great success that PDF has now achieved, it's not likely to be replaced any time soon ...

The Camelot Project: The Prehistory of Adobe Acrobat PDF