Rosetta Stone taught Spanish without a word of English. Its software showed a picture and a spoken phrase, again and again, until learners worked out the meaning the way a child does. The company called the method Dynamic Immersion. Its yellow boxes were sold at airport kiosks and advertised everywhere. In April 2009, with the financial crisis still raging and almost no companies going public, the Virginia company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

A Family Business in Harrisonburg

Allen Stoltzfus started the business in 1992 in Harrisonburg, Virginia, as Fairfield Language Technologies, run with members of his family. Many of its employees still worked in Harrisonburg when it went public. The bet was that computers could teach languages the natural way, through sight and sound. In January 2006 a new holding company bought the family firm, Fairfield & Sons, and took the Rosetta Stone name. The headquarters moved to Arlington, Virginia.

Immersion Meets the App Store

Rosetta Stone priced its IPO at $18 a share in April 2009 and listed on the NYSE as RST. Free phone apps such as Duolingo soon undercut its pricey boxed courses. The company shifted to subscriptions and leaned on its Lexia reading business for schools. In 2020 Cambium Learning, owned by Veritas Capital, bought Rosetta Stone for $30 a share. The language business was sold to IXL Learning in 2021.

Cover: Trial Piece with Hieroglyphs, Ancient Egyptian. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a stone carved with hieroglyphs (the Rosetta Stone).