[Leica] Another from the Museum: the Xerox Alto Computer

[richard at richardmanphoto.com (Richard Man)]

Herb, I bought my first Leica lens from someone on Waverley back in 2003.
He has a Xerox Dorado or Alto in his home. May be you know him?


On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Herbert Kanner <kanner at acm.org> wrote:

> This bit of computer history is so rich that, even with many details
> glossed over, it may be too long for some readers.
>
> The story begins with the Xerox Corporation. The company was started in
> 1909 with the name The Haloid Photographic Co. They made photographic
> paper. The name in time got shortened to Haloid Xerox. Eventually, they
> developed commercially what they renamed xerography, became a successful
> copier company, dropped their photographic endeavors and the name "Haloid".
>
> Their research laboratory was in New York State. Copiers were their total
> stock in trade, but as computers became more prevalent, they had a vague
> idea, without explicit plans, that they should pay some attention to
> computers. They bought a computer company, Scientific Data Systems (SDS) pf
> Santa Monica, CA, changed its name to Xerox Data Systems (XDS) and
> proceeded to run it into the ground.
>
> Around 1970, again with the vague idea that they should investigate
> various technical and scientific fields including computer science, they
> found the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The Palo Alto location, I was
> told in an early attempt at a job interview, was chosen to be as far as
> possible from corporate headquarters and far from XDS. The proximity of
> Stanford University was also a serious factor.
>
> The Alto was an attempt to prototype a computer for business use. While
> prohibitively expensive, the idea was that costs were dropping rapidly, and
> that in five to ten years, it was predicted, such a computer would be
> affordable to business. About two thousand of them were built, scattered
> around PARC and networked by ethernet cable. Ethernet was invented at PARC;
> so was the laser printer. Did Xerox make a fortune out of any of this? One
> commentator coined the sentence: "Xerox had the ability to snatch defeat
> from the jaws of victory!"
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002809.jpg.html
>
> What you are seeing is not the computer itself. The computer is a large
> box under the table, in a position where it could not possibly be shot. You
> will immediately notice the unusual shape of the screen.  So what do you do
> in business? You shuffle sheets of paper. What is the shape of a sheet of
> paper? Nuff said. At the upper left of the picture, you will see an early
> ethernet cable. On the right is a mouse. This the first public appearance
> of one since it was invented by Doug Engelbart in 1963 and publicly
> demonstrated in 1969.
>
> On the left is a second invention of Doug's: a five key keyboard on which
> one can play chords. The idea was that with the left hand on it and the
> right hand on the mouse, you can do many operations without having to let
> go of the mouse until you are seriously entering text. I have fun when
> giving tours at the Computer History Museum by asking any geeks on the tour
> how many different chords can be played with five fingers. I usually draw a
> blank. Some how the concept of chords is a mental block. If I had asked
> them: "What is the largest number you can write with five binary digits,"
> I'm sure they would have snapped out: 31.
>
> In 1979, related to the fact that Xerox had invented serious money in
> Apple, Steve Jobs got to see a demonstration of the Alto. The people at
> PARC did not want to show him what they considered to be the crown jewels,
> and on that day he didn't see anything he had not seen before. He was
> pissed off, made it known to Xerox headquarters, and a second visit was
> arranged at which the lab people were ordered to show him everything.
>
> At this point, we get into the realm of legend. There are two versions:
> the first, supported by some knowledgeable computer experts, is that Apple
> had been working for some time on the sort of graphical user interface that
> we know today on Windows and Macintosh, had encountered serious problems,
> and seeing that the problems had been solved at Xerox, proceeded to work
> harder and do the same at Apple. The second was that seeing this interface
> demonstrated at Xerox, Steve Jobs was stunned, and on returning to Apple
> caused the group working on the Lisa computer to go back to square one and
> redo hardware and software to provide that kind of interface. The Lisa, an
> unsuccessful product because of high price and poor performance, was
> followed in two years by the Macintosh.
>
> Having read the Steve Jobs biography, I'm inclined to go with the second
> version, the one in the biography. In the first place, the biographer seems
> to have been very meticulous and talked to a great many people. In the
> second place, it makes Steve Jobs seems a bit less brilliant.
>
>
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
>
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
>
>
>
>
>
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>



-- 
// richard <http://www.richardmanphoto.com>