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I would love to see the glory days of pure research groups like PARC and Bell Labs return. But, so many business folks are aware of how Xerox was embarrassed by

I would love to see the glory days of pure research groups like PARC and Bell Labs return. But, so many business folks are aware of how Xerox was embarrassed by PARC that it's unlikely that approach will be tried again anytime soon. When I speak of embarrassment here, it's not about the incredible innovation that came out of PARC, but about Xerox management's handling of that innovation. Billions and billions (trillions?) of dollars in value was created (e.g., Adobe, 3Com, SGI→NVIDIA, Mac / Windows, laser printers, ethernet, etc.) based on their research, but ~0% of that value went to Xerox. From a business point of view, it was a disaster. And business folks are primarily the ones deciding what's funded at this level. If I'm an executive who's not sure if I, or my organization, will be able to tell the great ideas from the duds, why spend money that might expose that?

coliveira 3y ago
> business folks are primarily the ones deciding what's funded A large part of the money that was funned into research at Xerox came from the government itself in the form of tax breaks and other benefits. So it was not a big sacrifice for Xerox to maintain that lab. If they had to change course was due to government policy becoming less interested in industrial innovation and more focused on offshoring and financial gains for the last decades.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  > A large part of the money that was funned [sic] into research at Xerox came from the government itself Do you have any support for that? For example, Xerox's financial disclosure forms should still be available. Because I think it's wrong. The government funded academic projects, not commercial ones.
  - coliveira 3y ago
    You don't need to look so far away: tax breaks for R&D are still a thing, in the 70s and 80s they were even more important for these giant companies. Government contracts were also a big income source for Xerox, AT&T, IBM, and others. Moreover, research labs were basically a method for companies to move discoveries from publicly funded Universities into private hands. They naturally benefited from receiving graduates and discoveries that started on publicly funded research institutions.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      In other words: no, you don't have any support.
      - coliveira 3y ago
        I have no obligation of doing research for you.
        AlbertCory 3y ago
        You're the one making the extravagant claims, not me. like >Government contracts were also a big income source for Xerox, AT&T, IBM, and others. Don't get offended if you get challenged on that. I don't think you actually know anything specific here.
        coliveira 3y ago
        You're making a fool of yourself. There is nothing extravagant about saying government gives money for industrial labs. Here are a few that you are lazy enough not to see: High Taxes Brought Us Xerox PARC and Bell Labs [1] PARC, a Xerox company, today announced it has secured funding from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency [2] NTIA grants Verizon, AT&T-led open RAN group $42M [3] Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and others partner with US government on AI research [4] Governor Hochul announced a $10 billion partnership with the semiconductor industry such as IBM [5] [1] https://slate.com/business/2012/07/xerox-parc-and-bell-labs-brought-to-you-by-high-taxes.html https://slate.com/business/2012/07/xerox-parc-and-bell-labs-... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20231211024425/https://www.parc.com/web/20231211024425/https://www.parc.com/press-releases/parc-secures-arpa-e-funding-to-build-energy-saving-travel-preferences-attractive-to-individual-travelers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231211024425/https://www.parc.... [3] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/old_latest-stories/ntia-grants-verizon-att-led-open-ran-group-42m/ https://www.mobileworldlive.com/old_latest-stories/ntia-gran... [4] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-google-and-others-partner-with-us-government-on-ai-research-program-160111850.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-google-and-o... [5] https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-10-billion-partnership-bring-next-generation-research-and https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-1...
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Bingo
- ghufran_syed 3y ago
  "The Idea Factory" is a great book about Bell Labs, it doesn't talk about tax breaks or subsidies as much as the need to provide some kind of public benefit to stave off the anti-trust regulator. Which is why they basically gave away the the transistor and the semi-conductor. The Bell system also had a LOT of money, kind of like the Google of their day, so they could fund "moonshots" "Dealers of Lightning" is about Xerox Parc and is also a great read if you're interested in the subject. I don't think the level of tax breaks has really changed between then and now for R&D, though maybe reducing the headline tax rate reduced the benefit of them? But I think the main issue is that the money wormhole stopped working - Industrial research labs seem to be a kind of luxury good
- shrubble 3y ago
  You might find this blog post of interest: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-rd-lab/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-am...
zer00eyz 3y ago
>>> When I speak of embarrassment here, it's not about the incredible innovation that came out of PARC, but about Xerox management's handling of that innovation. You mean like google and ML and Attention is All You Need... Or let's look at what a group of people with brains and money went on to do: the PayPal mafia. Would they not be the modern day version of att/unix(a product of anti trust)->Berkley/Unix->and the foundation of the valley (sun, most databases)...
bruce511 3y ago
Between laser printers and photo copiers (built on laser printer tech) Xerox did just fine. If anything, Xerox's "willingness" (intentional or not) to allow the root ideas to grow in various places has been a blessing to the IT industry as a whole. What you are suggesting is they could, or should, have become all the companies you listed. But that would gave been both impossible, and counter productive. Steve jobs saw the GUI, and Ethernet, and object orientated programming, and laser printers, and office software, and yet Mac is famous for just the GUI. Others would run with networking, programming, MS with office and do on. And in addition to those major players there were lots of others competing too. So no I don't think Xerox management needs to be embarrassed. They saw the value printing and ran with that. They left others to develop the other ideas. And in the long run we are much richer for that. So, from me anyway, there's no shame on them, rather a tip of the hat, and a nod to the vision they had to create PARC in the first place. They are the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- musicale 3y ago
  > Steve jobs saw the GUI, and Ethernet, and object orientated programming, and laser printers, and office software, and yet Mac is famous for just the GUI. Others would run with networking, programming, MS with office and do on. In the 1980s Apple adopted/commercialized: GUI -> Lisa (later Mac) Desktop LAN -> AppleTalk (NBP lookup eventually influenced mDNS) OOP -> Object Pascal (still exists in Delphi/Lazarus); arguably HyperTalk (messages/events/handlers) Laser Printers -> LaserWriter Office Software -> Lisa Office System; MacWrite, MacDraw, MacPaint And of course Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint debuted on the Mac. But your point is well taken - PARC alumni (and ideas) did not only land at Apple; for example, most of us have probably used Ethernet, Microsoft Word, PDF (derived from PostScript), etc.
  - bruce511 3y ago
    Oh, I agree, Apple did ultimately make use of those technologies. They built on those ideas, but the again so did lots of others. I'm not suggesting Apple didn't (ultimately) embrace those technologies, but rather that they weren't the "driving force" behind them. Whereas you could say Apple was the "driving force" of the GUI. Microsoft would go on to drive Office software. There were word processors, and spreadsheets before Office, but Office integrated all those tools together and became the gold standard. Adobe would drive desktop publishing, PDF and so on. Sooo much of today's world is built on PARC, SRI, Bell Labs, and a couple others. It was an explosion of development and research seldom seen in any field outside times of war.
AlbertCory 3y ago
> From a business point of view, it was a disaster. Dead wrong. Laser printers alone were a $2B a year business. Printers, especially big ones, were right in their wheelhouse. If you want to argue it could have been so much more wealth, you're right.
- Affric 3y ago
  I think they’re referring to PARC specifically. Not Xerox as a whole
  - DaniFong 3y ago
    Laser printers were invented at PARC, the physicists were a whole other element of what was going on there, beyond the computer work
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Starkweather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Starkweather
- rented_mule 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm a bit jaded here. You're right that they made a ton of money, but left a lot of great work to fester, even in laser printing. My perspective comes working in Xerox engineering on high volume printers in the early 1990s. PARC folks repeatedly came through with great ideas about how to make the printers faster and cheaper (at the same time). My favorite demo they gave us was replacing the PDP-11 inside the printer, which was becoming increasingly expensive, with a Sun SPARCstation. They had done all the work to do a full demo on the prototype printer we were working on. Everything was much faster and it provided a lot more features. Plus development printer software could be developed in C or other languages, not just assembly. They were effectively told "that looks nice" and sent back to Palo Alto. That was hard to watch.
  - dhosek 3y ago
bitwize 3y ago
According to Kay, Xerox made more on the royalties for the laser printer alone than it cost to run the lab -- over 200 times more. They made a killing on PARC tech, just not as much as they could have if they were helmed by someone like Jobs or Gates.
wbl 3y ago
If you're not sure you can do it, why would you be doing that job?
axus 3y ago
Wouldn't the lesson learned be to invest in the cool ideas and companies that are generated, and avoid the mistakes of the past?

coliveira 3y ago

> business folks are primarily the ones deciding what's funded A large part of the money that was funned into research at Xerox came from the government itself in the form of tax breaks and other benefits. So it was not a big sacrifice for Xerox to maintain that lab. If they had to change course was due to government policy becoming less interested in industrial innovation and more focused on offshoring and financial gains for the last decades.

AlbertCory 3y ago
> A large part of the money that was funned [sic] into research at Xerox came from the government itself Do you have any support for that? For example, Xerox's financial disclosure forms should still be available. Because I think it's wrong. The government funded academic projects, not commercial ones.
- coliveira 3y ago
  You don't need to look so far away: tax breaks for R&D are still a thing, in the 70s and 80s they were even more important for these giant companies. Government contracts were also a big income source for Xerox, AT&T, IBM, and others. Moreover, research labs were basically a method for companies to move discoveries from publicly funded Universities into private hands. They naturally benefited from receiving graduates and discoveries that started on publicly funded research institutions.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    In other words: no, you don't have any support.
    - coliveira 3y ago
      I have no obligation of doing research for you.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        You're the one making the extravagant claims, not me. like >Government contracts were also a big income source for Xerox, AT&T, IBM, and others. Don't get offended if you get challenged on that. I don't think you actually know anything specific here.
        coliveira 3y ago
        You're making a fool of yourself. There is nothing extravagant about saying government gives money for industrial labs. Here are a few that you are lazy enough not to see: High Taxes Brought Us Xerox PARC and Bell Labs [1] PARC, a Xerox company, today announced it has secured funding from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency [2] NTIA grants Verizon, AT&T-led open RAN group $42M [3] Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and others partner with US government on AI research [4] Governor Hochul announced a $10 billion partnership with the semiconductor industry such as IBM [5] [1] https://slate.com/business/2012/07/xerox-parc-and-bell-labs-brought-to-you-by-high-taxes.html https://slate.com/business/2012/07/xerox-parc-and-bell-labs-... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20231211024425/https://www.parc.com/web/20231211024425/https://www.parc.com/press-releases/parc-secures-arpa-e-funding-to-build-energy-saving-travel-preferences-attractive-to-individual-travelers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231211024425/https://www.parc.... [3] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/old_latest-stories/ntia-grants-verizon-att-led-open-ran-group-42m/ https://www.mobileworldlive.com/old_latest-stories/ntia-gran... [4] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-google-and-others-partner-with-us-government-on-ai-research-program-160111850.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-google-and-o... [5] https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-10-billion-partnership-bring-next-generation-research-and https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-1...
actionfromafar 3y ago
Bingo
ghufran_syed 3y ago
"The Idea Factory" is a great book about Bell Labs, it doesn't talk about tax breaks or subsidies as much as the need to provide some kind of public benefit to stave off the anti-trust regulator. Which is why they basically gave away the the transistor and the semi-conductor. The Bell system also had a LOT of money, kind of like the Google of their day, so they could fund "moonshots" "Dealers of Lightning" is about Xerox Parc and is also a great read if you're interested in the subject. I don't think the level of tax breaks has really changed between then and now for R&D, though maybe reducing the headline tax rate reduced the benefit of them? But I think the main issue is that the money wormhole stopped working - Industrial research labs seem to be a kind of luxury good
shrubble 3y ago
You might find this blog post of interest: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-rd-lab/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-am...

zer00eyz 3y ago

>>> When I speak of embarrassment here, it's not about the incredible innovation that came out of PARC, but about Xerox management's handling of that innovation. You mean like google and ML and Attention is All You Need... Or let's look at what a group of people with brains and money went on to do: the PayPal mafia. Would they not be the modern day version of att/unix(a product of anti trust)->Berkley/Unix->and the foundation of the valley (sun, most databases)...

bruce511 3y ago

Between laser printers and photo copiers (built on laser printer tech) Xerox did just fine. If anything, Xerox's "willingness" (intentional or not) to allow the root ideas to grow in various places has been a blessing to the IT industry as a whole. What you are suggesting is they could, or should, have become all the companies you listed. But that would gave been both impossible, and counter productive. Steve jobs saw the GUI, and Ethernet, and object orientated programming, and laser printers, and office software, and yet Mac is famous for just the GUI. Others would run with networking, programming, MS with office and do on. And in addition to those major players there were lots of others competing too. So no I don't think Xerox management needs to be embarrassed. They saw the value printing and ran with that. They left others to develop the other ideas. And in the long run we are much richer for that. So, from me anyway, there's no shame on them, rather a tip of the hat, and a nod to the vision they had to create PARC in the first place. They are the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
musicale 3y ago
> Steve jobs saw the GUI, and Ethernet, and object orientated programming, and laser printers, and office software, and yet Mac is famous for just the GUI. Others would run with networking, programming, MS with office and do on. In the 1980s Apple adopted/commercialized: GUI -> Lisa (later Mac) Desktop LAN -> AppleTalk (NBP lookup eventually influenced mDNS) OOP -> Object Pascal (still exists in Delphi/Lazarus); arguably HyperTalk (messages/events/handlers) Laser Printers -> LaserWriter Office Software -> Lisa Office System; MacWrite, MacDraw, MacPaint And of course Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint debuted on the Mac. But your point is well taken - PARC alumni (and ideas) did not only land at Apple; for example, most of us have probably used Ethernet, Microsoft Word, PDF (derived from PostScript), etc.
- bruce511 3y ago
  Oh, I agree, Apple did ultimately make use of those technologies. They built on those ideas, but the again so did lots of others. I'm not suggesting Apple didn't (ultimately) embrace those technologies, but rather that they weren't the "driving force" behind them. Whereas you could say Apple was the "driving force" of the GUI. Microsoft would go on to drive Office software. There were word processors, and spreadsheets before Office, but Office integrated all those tools together and became the gold standard. Adobe would drive desktop publishing, PDF and so on. Sooo much of today's world is built on PARC, SRI, Bell Labs, and a couple others. It was an explosion of development and research seldom seen in any field outside times of war.

AlbertCory 3y ago

> From a business point of view, it was a disaster. Dead wrong. Laser printers alone were a $2B a year business. Printers, especially big ones, were right in their wheelhouse. If you want to argue it could have been so much more wealth, you're right.

Affric 3y ago
I think they’re referring to PARC specifically. Not Xerox as a whole
- DaniFong 3y ago
  Laser printers were invented at PARC, the physicists were a whole other element of what was going on there, beyond the computer work
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Starkweather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Starkweather
rented_mule 3y ago
Yeah, I'm a bit jaded here. You're right that they made a ton of money, but left a lot of great work to fester, even in laser printing. My perspective comes working in Xerox engineering on high volume printers in the early 1990s. PARC folks repeatedly came through with great ideas about how to make the printers faster and cheaper (at the same time). My favorite demo they gave us was replacing the PDP-11 inside the printer, which was becoming increasingly expensive, with a Sun SPARCstation. They had done all the work to do a full demo on the prototype printer we were working on. Everything was much faster and it provided a lot more features. Plus development printer software could be developed in C or other languages, not just assembly. They were effectively told "that looks nice" and sent back to Palo Alto. That was hard to watch.
- dhosek 3y ago

bitwize 3y ago

According to Kay, Xerox made more on the royalties for the laser printer alone than it cost to run the lab -- over 200 times more. They made a killing on PARC tech, just not as much as they could have if they were helmed by someone like Jobs or Gates.

wbl 3y ago

If you're not sure you can do it, why would you be doing that job?

axus 3y ago

Wouldn't the lesson learned be to invest in the cool ideas and companies that are generated, and avoid the mistakes of the past?