Opportunity Lost
 | Author:
Victor Sample
Vic Sample: MT43 News Treasurer |
As early as 1969 Xerox Corporation envisioned the “paperless office”: business offices that would do everything on computer-driven equipment and with electronic documents.
Founded by Xerox Chief Scientist Jacob Goldman, the Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) was a division of Xerox devoted to the development of the paperless office. Xerox PARC was located in Palo Alto, California, due to the proximity of Stanford University, a leading computer research center.
Xerox hired some of the most promising computer science and computer engineering graduates from Stanford as well as some leading professors. The Xerox PARC group created much of the technology that we use today both in offices and in our homes: laser printers, ethernet networks, personal computers, the graphical user interface (“GUI”, like Windows), the computer mouse and much more.
However, Xerox largely ignored the work done at Xerox PARC. Many of the inventors of things like laser printing, ethernet, etc., left Xerox and received their own patents on the technology. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computers, knew many of the people working at the Xerox PARC and frequently visited there. Jobs saw the GUI interface being developed at Xerox PARC.
Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary and immediately understood the value of what he was seeing. He went back to Apple and had his team of software engineers start working on a GUI interface for the Apple computers. Later Microsoft adopted the technology which led to the Windows operating system.
In a somewhat humorous turn of events, Apple filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in 1988 seeking to stop Microsoft and Hewlett Packard from developing graphical user interface-based operating systems. The court ruled against Apple, except for the use of the “folder icon” and the “trash can icon”. The district court ruled that Microsoft and HP’s use of the icons was an infringement.
What was humorous about the lawsuit is that Apple was then sued for copyright infringement by Xerox stating that Apple’s GUI was heavily based on Xerox’s original GUI development. That case was also dismissed.
Why did Xerox abandon the Xerox PARC and largely ignore the work done there? In short, east coast mentality vs. west coast mentality. Xerox is an east coast company based in Stamford, Ct. In the 1960s and 1970s, the east coast business establishment was very “uptight”. Three-piece suits were required business attire; well groomed (and short hair) was required; beards and mustaches were frowned upon. IBM even had a department charged with teaching new employees how to dress the “IBM way”.
Imagine executives from Xerox flying to Palo Alto, California and finding their employees wearing jeans, sandals and t-shirts, even sporting long hair and beards. Bean bag chairs were common in the offices. One can imagine there might have been a faint odor of marijuana in the air.
It was hard for East Coast Xerox executives to take these employees seriously. They never really received the recognition they deserved. What a lost opportunity.
