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

[kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner)]

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.