Innovation, Invention and Missed Opportunity IXDS5503: Media History and Theory Professor: Jason Occhipinti April 13, 2015 By: Venus M. Popplewell
Innovation, Invention and Missed Opportunity
IXDS5503: Media History and Theory • Popplewell
With a mission to be known as more than a supplier of office copiers, Xerox Corporation created the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1970. Their modest goal was to “create the office of the future.” Xerox assembled a “brain trust of engineering geniuses” (Hiltzick, 2009, p. 451) that would create several monumental innovations including the first personal computer, the laser printer, the first handheld “mouse” inputting device, the graphical user interface (GUI) and the Ethernet (based on ARPAnet, a predecessor of the Internet). But Xerox wrestled with the problem of how to manage these technologies that did not fit within its business model. Xerox failed to commercially exploit the cutting-edge ideas delivered by PARC. But, their unparalleled run of invention and innovation would fundamentally alter the course of computing and define how we use computers today. PARC's 200,000-square-foot facility in Palo Alto, Calif. is carved into the surrounding landscape. Every floor has outdoor patios. Cutline and photo credit: Computerworld.com
The late George E. Pake, founding director of Xerox PARC, was charged with creating the office of the future. Cutline and photo credit: Computerworld.com
In 1959, Xerox introduced its office copier and in less than a decade became the first company to reach a billion dollars in sales based on the merits of a new technology (Smith, 1999).1 Led by the management team of CEO, Peter McColough and President, Joe Wilson, Xerox successfully commercialized xerographic technology and held an unprecedented monopoly on the market. But technological companies, like IBM, brought fierce competition to the industry of office products and “competition between the two giants was inevitable” (Smith, 1999).2 To protect Xerox’s “rocket-like rise from turning into a Roman candle” (Smith, 1999).3 Xerox established the Palo Alto Research Center and turned more confidently to the task of diversification.
Hiring the Best
Jack Goldman, head of research at Xerox, recommended to Peter McColough that the company set up a new digital technology research center (Smith, 1999).4 Goldman understood the copier business might become vulnerable to computers if Xerox failed to pursue long-range digital research. Of IBM, Smith (1999)5 stated, “The [IBM] machines were owned by one of every six households, and their absence in an office was far more remarkable than their presence.” Goldman recruited a long-standing acquaintance and like-minded physicist named George Pake to set up and manage the proposed Xerox research center. Xerox had a tradition of supporting research, and McColough seemed to understand it very well. Pake described the research climate, “…I told McColough and Goldman that it would take between five and ten years to get any results, neither one of them blanched at all. McColough just really seemed to understand that you don’t get quick payoffs from research” (Smith, 1999).6
Bob Taylor, former director of ARPA and Xerox PARC manager/recruiter, ca. 1970. Photo credit: computerhistory.org
Also tapped by Goldman to lead and recruit for PARC was former director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Bob Taylor. According to Rao
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Innovation, Invention and Missed Opportunity
(2010) Taylor had a gift for finding and cultivating talented researchers in the computer science field. Smith (1999)7 documented a former lab member at PARC stating, “We hired people with fire in their eyes,” while another one noted, “The people here all have track records and are used to dealing with lightning in both hands.” ARPA allowed Taylor to build one of the most talented networks of computer scientists and researchers in the world. This is where he met Alan Kay. Kay, a colorful computer scientist, envisioned a computer interface that was so simple and intuitive that a child could use it with little instruction. He described his idea in his doctoral thesis at the University of Utah titled “The Reactive Engine” to give nod toward Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Engine.” Taylor admired Kay’s unconventional thinking and asked him to join PARC’s team. In addition to Kay, Taylor set his sights on many other stars in the ARPA network. “Taylor made two key hires for PARC. First, in November he hired the engineers of the failing Berkeley Computer Company, including Butler Lampson, Chuck Thacker, and Peter Deutsch. Second, Taylor raided Doug Engelbart lab at [Stanford Research Institute] Augmentation Research Center, where there was no desire to make a product or prototype, but just to search for knowledge. Bill English, a brilliant hardware engineer [and co-inventor of the first mouse], left for PARC and [eventually], other Engelbart proteges followed (Rao, 2010). “In Lampson, Thacker, Kay, the group from Engelbart’s lab, and others, PARC had attracted more highly qualified talent in a year than most new research organizations assemble in three years. The national computer science community started to take note – something unusual was happening in Palo Alto. And Taylor knew that such impressions promised him even greater access to the best computer talent” (Smith, 1999).8
Xerox PARC engineer and computer scientist, Alan Kay, ca. 1981 Photo credit: computerhistory.com
Engineers at PARC, ca. 1972. Photo credit: computerhistory.org
Inventing the Future
PARC opened on July 1, 1970. The idea for Xerox was to invest in PARC as a springboard for developing new technologies and fresh concepts that would lead to future products (Weiss, 2010). “The PARC researchers were tinkerers and hackers. Generally, the office had a feeling of collegiality and a grad school environment” (Rao, 2010). Hackers were nerdy and smart but had no interest in conventional goals. Weekly meetings were set in conference rooms decorated with lounge sofas, beanbag chairs and floor-to-ceiling whiteboards. The hippie counter-culture that was shaping the management style of Silicon Valley was echoed within the walls of Xerox PARC. Euchner (2012) recounted this statement by John Seely Brown, former chief sci-
Xerox PARC Computer Science Laboratory class, ca. 1971. Bob Taylor, second from right, would hold classes with laboratory students in "beanbag" chairs. Cutline and Photo credit: computerhistory.org
Innovation, Invention and Missed Opportunity
IXDS5503: Media History and Theory • Popplewell
entist of Xerox Corporation and director of PARC, “In the early '70s, we were at an amazing moment in which the digital world was being born. At PARC, we were given the freedom to invent what we wanted and build whatever we needed in order to make possible whatever we dreamed. We had a simple mantra: "Build what you need; use what you build." This gave us a tremendous grounding for many of the things that we invented” (p. 18). The Xerox 9700, the first laser printer using technology invented by Starkweather. Photo credit: digibarn.com
The First Laser Printer
In early 1971, Gary Starkweather transferred from Xerox’s other research lab in Rochester, New York to PARC. He brought with him the concept of the laser printer. Starkweather conceived a technology where the laser “painted” an image onto a xerographic drum with greater speed and precision than ordinary white light. He had modulated a laser to create a bit-mapped electronic image (Rao, 2010). The commercial project was approved and killed three times by Xerox executives. The Xerox 9700 finally hit the market in 1978 and along with its predecessors, would generate billions in sales for Xerox (Rao, 2010).
The Xerox Alto and Smalltalk
Conceived two years before PARC existed, the Dynabook was researcher Alan Kay's concept for future mobile personal computing. Much of the thinking that went into the Dynabook showed up later in the Xerox Alto, in Smalltalk and in PARC's "ubiquitous computing" vision. Cutline and Photo credit: computerworld.com
The vision of Alan Kay realized; children using the Xerox Alto. Photo credit: Quora.com
The scientists at Xerox PARC designed, built and used a complete system of hardware and software that fundamentally defined what a networked computer can do today. The breakthrough Xerox Alto was developed in 1973 but can be traced back, in theory, to Alan Kay’s doctoral thesis. In the spring of 1972, Kay presented Xerox management group with an interactive, personal computing device concept he called the Dynabook. According to Smith (1999)9 Kay described the Dynabook as a “dynamic media for creative thought” and it bore no resemblance to what most people in 1972 considered a computer. Kay went on to explain his vision by saying: “Imagine having your own self-contained knowledge manipulator in a portable package the size and shape of an ordinary notebook. Suppose it had enough power to outrace your senses of sight and hearing, enough capacity to store for later retrieval thousands of page-equivalents or reference materials, poems, letters, recipes, records, drawings, animations, musical scores, waveforms, dynamic simulations, and anything else you would like to remember and change” (Smith, 1999).10 Dynabook would include Smalltalk, a computer programming language developed by Kay that could be used intuitively by computer non-experts and more importantly to Kay, by children. Smalltalk was not yet available for Dynabook, but would become an important interaction feature for the future Xerox Alto by creating the graphical user interface. “Smalltalk was the first true object-oriented
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Innovation, Invention and Missed Opportunity
computer programming language and it remains popular with PC programmers today” (Dennis, n.d.). Kay failed to win PARC’s management support for the Dynabook but his radical ideas encouraged colleagues Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker to include him in their pursuit of what Lampson called “personal computing” (Smith, 1999).11 The result was the Xerox Alto. The inputting innovations pioneered by these men and its early software programs are still considered, in part, the most influential inventions of modern day personal computing. The revolutionary inputting and hardware features for the Alto are as follows: 14 • Ethernet networking • Graphical User Interface (GUI), • Icons • Bitmapping • Scalable type • A three-button mouse • Removable cartridge hard drive • 64-key keyboard with a five-finger key set The Alto software innovations included: 14 • Many programming languages including Smalltalk and Mesa (later influencing Modela) • Bravo and Gypsy – the first What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) word processors • Laurel (later Hardy) – Network email clients • FTP and chat utilities – Games including Chess, Pinball, Othello and others • Sil – vector graphics editor • Officetalk – forms/processing system
The Xerox Alto, considered the first personal computer, was developed for internal use at PARC. Work on the Alto prompted related innovations including WYSIWYG editors, GUIs, bitmapped displays and simultaneous file storage. Cutline and photo credit: computerhistory.com
Rao (2010) asserts the Alto was revolutionary because it was a “personal workstation for one, not a room-sized, time-sharing computer for many, meant to sit on a single desktop.” It is credited as being the first “personal computer” (PC) in a world of mainframes. The Alto combined for the first time, the interactive and “online” elements we now take for granted in a desktop computer or tablet.
Missed Opportunities
“Highlighting the advances in computer technology being made at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, the June 30, 1975, edition of Business Week declared, “Office automation has emerged as a full-blown systems approach that will revolutionize how offices work.” The article emphasized three predictions: the office systems market would be huge; only firms with courage, persistence, and
PARC's graphical user interface, developed for the Alto computer, inspired almost all subsequent GUIs. Shown here: the GUI for the Smalltalk object-oriented programming language. Cutline and photo credit: computerworld.com
Innovation, Invention and Missed Opportunity
IXDS5503: Media History and Theory • Popplewell
enormous resources would succeed; the most likely winners would be IBM and Xerox” (Smith, 1999).12 Tragically, this prediction was never to be realized. The Xerox Alto was not designed to be a commercial computer. “The original plan was to make 30 units for the PARC computer science lab” (Rao, 2010). In August 1977, Xerox shelved a plan to market the Alto as a commercial product. It closed the door to any possibility that the company would benefit from the original and progressive personal computing technology they developed.
Three Button Mouse: The Xerox handheld inputting device to interact with the point-and-click graphical interface. Photo credit: www.cs.auckland.ac.nz
In December 1979, Steve Jobs infamously visited PARC two times with a team of Apple engineers. Jobs was shown the Smalltalk-80 programming environment, networking and most importantly, WYSIWYG – the mouse driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto. “According to Larry Tesler, who conducted the demonstration of the Alto for Jobs, the young entrepreneur immediately grasped what had eluded Xerox executives for more than half a decade” (Smith, 1999).13 Jobs promptly integrated the technology into first the Apple Lisa and then into the Macintosh. Frustrated with Xerox’s singularly focused business model, many of the PARC scientist’s left the research facility to join Jobs at his request. Years later, Steve Jobs had this to say about the missed opportunity for Xerox, “If Xerox had known what it had and had taken advantage of its real opportunities, it could have been as big as I.B.M. plus Microsoft plus Xerox combined – and the largest high-technology company in the world” (Gladwell, 2011). “Commercializing a radical new technology often means betting the company on the outcome. In 1981 this had decidedly different meanings for Xerox and Apple. Xerox employed 125,000 workers, Apple forty. Virtually Xerox’s entire workforce was focused on selling one type of product: the office copier. They represented decades of corporate investment – hundreds of millions of dollars – in embedded training, technology, and customer service” (Hiltzik, 1999, p. 392). Xerox Corporation decided against taking the risk with unknown technology provided by the Alto and continued to focus on innovations that would improve their copier business.
Steve Jobs with the Apple II computer, ca. 1979 - the same year he gained entrance to Xerox PARC. Cutline and photo credit: computerworld.com
Xerox PARC has often been criticized for its past failures to capitalize on some of its greatest inventions, allowing other companies to cash in on its ideas. Xerox fumbled the dawn of the personal computer era because top management was preoccupied with defending its core copier business [from international competitors]. (Holusha, 1998). Nevertheless, its reputation as a technology innovator is impeccable. (staff et al., 2010). From 1979 to 1998, thirty-five technology-based organizations emerged from Xerox’s research centers. Thus, contradicting the common perception that Xerox “fumbled the future” (Chesbrough, 2002, p. 803).
Innovation, Invention and Missed Opportunity
IXDS5503: Media History and Theory • Popplewell
This partial list includes enterprise and recent startup clients, as well as past and other spinoffs: (n.d.). • 3Com • VLSI • GRiD • Aurora • Optimem • FileNet • Metaphor
• Sunrise • Komag • Adobe • SDLI • Microlytics • SynOptics • StepperVision
• LG Chem Power • P&G • HexaTech • Sony • Thin Film Electronics
• PowerCloud • BASF • Motorola • NEC • Samsung
• Entire • ParcPlace • Envos • Quadmark • PixelCraft • LiveWorks • XESystems
PARC regularly works with established companies to find technological solutions:
Inspired by other networks, such as Alohanet and ARPAnet, they invented a “local area network” called Ethernet, first described by PARC engineer, Bob Metcalfe in 1973. Photo credit: www.wikimedia.org
The Influence of the Alto and Other PARC Innovations
The Xerox Corporation’s decision that it was a copier company and not a computer company led to the abandonment of the world’s first practical personal computer, the Xerox Alto. While Xerox didn’t capitalize on its groundbreaking innovations, the direct influences of the technology discovered are unassailable. The pioneering use of icons, point-and-click commands, pull-down menus, local area networks, ubiquitous computing and graphical user interface have been influencing the design of software, personal computers and their descendants for more than forty years. PARC’s radical leap in tech evolution led to remarkable feats in computing. Apple and Microsoft (arguably the most successful computer companies) respectively created user-friendly personal computers (Macintosh) and the graphical operating system (Microsoft Windows) in response to growing interest in the graphical user interface technology – first designed, built and used at PARC. Thanks to Xerox PARC, everyday people are now able to focus on using the computer as a tool to accomplish a task rather than on learning the computer’s technical details. The early lifecycle of the personal computer can be wholly attributed to the innovations that arose out of Xerox PARC in the 1970s and those same inventions are at the core of virtually every digital product we use today.
A precursor to the PDA, the PARCTab was a prototype handheld device developed in the '80s that could be used with an office network. Cutline and photo credit: computerworld.com
After three decades as a division of Xerox, PARC was transformed in 2002 into an independent, wholly owned subsidiary company dedicated to developing advances in science and business concepts with the support of commercial partners and clients. Photo credit: sutromedia.com
Innovation, Invention and Missed Opportunity
IXDS5503: Media History and Theory • Popplewell
Resources Chesbrough, H. (2002). Graceful Exits and Missed Opportunities: Xerox’s Management of its Technology Spin-off Organizations. Business History Review, 76(04), 803–837. http://doi.org/10.2307/4127710 Dennis, M. A. (n.d.). Xerox PARC | research centre, Palo Alto, California, United States. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/706263/Xerox-PARC Euchner, J. (2012, September). The Evolution of Innovation: An Interview with John Seely Brown. Research-Technology Management. (p. 18) Gladwell, M. (2011). Creation Myth - The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/creation-myth Hiltzik, M. A. (1999). Dealers of Lightning: Xerox Parc and the Dawn of the Computer Age. New York: Harper Business. (pp. 392, 451) Holusha, J. (1998). Putting Ideas to Work: The Case of Xerox PARC. Retrieved from http://www.strategy-business.com/article/9854?gko=3a579 Rao, A. (2010). Lab Inventors: Xerox PARC and the Innovation Machine (1969-83). In P. Scaruffi & A. Rao, A History of Silicon Valley. United States: Omniware Group. Smith, D. K., & Alexander, R. C. (1999). Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, The First Personal Computer (1st ed.). New York: iUniverse.com. staff, C., Computerworld staff Follow RSS Computerworld, PT, 2010 7:00 AM, RSS, C. staff U., & RSS, U. (2010). Photo gallery: PARC through the years. Retrieved from http://www.computerworld.com/article/2515857/computer-hardware/photo-gallery--parc-through-theyears.html?page=9 Weiss, T. R. (2010, September 20). Xerox PARC turns 40: Marketing four decades of tech innovations. Computerworld. (text and photo credit) (n.d.). Retrieved 13 April 2015, from http://www.parc.com/services/industry-contributions.html
Footnotes 1
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Smith, 1999, Intro, para. 20 Smith, 1999, Intro, para. 20 3 Smith, 1999, Chapter 1, para. 28 4 Smith, 1999, Chapter 2, para. 1 5 Smith, 1999, Intro, para. 14 6 Smith, 1999, Chapter 4, para. 7 7 Smith, 1999, Chapter 6, para. 7 14
Smith, 1999, Chapter 5, para. 34 Smith, 1999, Chapter 6, para. 48 10 Smith, 1999, Chapter 6, para. 48 11 Smith, 1999, Chapter 6, para. 51 12 Smith, 1999, Chapter 10, para. 1 13 Smith, 1999, Chapter 20, para. 2
History of Computers and Computing, Birth of the modern computer, Personal computer, Xerox Alto. (n.d.). Retrieved 12 April 2015, from http://historycomputer.com/ModernComputer/Personal/Alto.html