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Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age

Michael A. Hiltzik

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  • Patrick CollisonRecommended
    His Labs page recommends the work, and his Silicon Valley history page calls it the best PARC history. No particular edition is established.
    Source

Summary

Michael Hiltzik reconstructs the development of Xerox PARC through interviews with its scientists, engineers, administrators and executives. The account follows the research center’s growth and the computing ideas developed there.

It also examines why Xerox failed to make full commercial use of those innovations. The history places technical achievement beside the corporate decisions that determined what reached the market.

  • SourceChecked publisher or author source · Dealers of Lightning section: interviews with PARC scientists, engineers and executives; Xerox’s failure to exploit its innovations

Why read it Our view

Compare a research team’s technical achievements with the parent company’s decisions about commercializing them.