4 ms·

The History of Xerox

73 points by rbanffy 11mo ago

santiagobasulto 11mo ago
Very interesting story and well written so far, I'll finish it after work. One very interesting thing about Xerox was not only their technology but their choice of business model. As smaller companies couldn't afford an expensive copier, they'd "rent" it and charge per copy. From the article: > The company placed machines in well-traveled public spaces where it was on display, and in addition to sales, they also offered machine rental for smaller organizations. This was a low price for up to 2000 copies, and each copy after was 4¢. They also promised that a machine could be returned within fifteen days. The 650 pound behemoth was wildly successful. Another similar interesting business model was pioneered by Rolls-Royce in their airplane turbine business. Instead of selling their whole turbine, they'd "rent" it and charge it "per flight hour", derisking both parts.
- ErigmolCt 11mo ago
  It's interesting how these models keep reappearing whenever technology gets expensive, complex, and mission-critical
ewa-szyszka 11mo ago
Solid read! I started my career of at a former Xerox R&D that was acquired by NAVER Labs, which is an interesting story in itself of passing of time and the new (AI R&D) replacing the old (print technology): https://www.news.xerox.com/news/NAVER-to-acquire-Xerox-Research-Centre-Europe https://www.news.xerox.com/news/NAVER-to-acquire-Xerox-Resea...
intrasight 11mo ago
My father worked for Haloid for a bit. Worked there while also attending NYU. Layer he moved to Kodak and in 1967 our family moved to Rochester. My father retired from Kodak in 1985. Xerox and Kodak were both amazing companies, and created a comfortable middle or upper middle class lifestyle for many thousands of Rochesterians.
- MinimalAction 11mo ago
  As someone who has lived in Rochester recently, I am incredibly curious to hear from folks who saw the peak of the city. I often hear of Kodak and Xerox providing hefty bonuses which also made the local businesses offer deals then for a better turnover. Would love to hear more from you.
  - intrasight 11mo ago
    The main "hefty bonus" was treating employees exceptionally well and providing a lifetime of employment. And for us kids, it was an idyllic environment in which to grow up.
Stratoscope 11mo ago
> the computer they wanted was DEC PDP-10. At this point, Paul Strassman was replacing every IBM and DEC machine at Xerox with an SDS machine. This scenario must have played out in multiple places. I was involved in one of them. I was working at Tymshare, and we were evaluating the PDP-10 and the Xerox (XDS/SDS) Sigma 7. My manager called me into his office. --- Mike, this conversation is strictly between you and me. If anyone asks, I will deny it happened. You are our best Sigma 7 expert, and even you prefer the PDP-10. We're doing final acceptance tests on the Sigma 7. If all the tests pass, we have to commit to it. If enough tests fail, we can return that machine. --- I got the hint. Challenge accepted! Knowing all the ins and outs of the Sigma 7, I found a few subtle ways to make it crash at random times, without any indication that anyone had interfered with the tests. Eventually I slipped up and left my username visible in a core dump. Back to my manager's office. --- Mike, we have a problem. Xerox figured out that you were messing with the Sigma 7 system software. We told them we would fire you. So, you're fired. You can't be in the office any more. But you do have your Teletype at home, right? You have some projects to do on the PDP-10. Can you work on those and stay away from the Sigma 7? Keep track of your hours, and after this blows over we will hire you back and give you that back pay. --- So I did. And they did!
- panick21_ 11mo ago
  That's a great story. From the Oral History of Synertek, they wanted to buy some buy some PDP-11 but they had been bought by Honeywell. Honeywell had told them they would not be controlled and have a free hand. Honeywell of course wouldn't not allow it and told them they would get a free Honeywell mainframe. And they got send a mainframe that was completely useless and didn't have any relevant software. So eventually Synertek collapsed and many of those people founded VSLI Technology. At AT&T they bought a lot of PDP-11s, they were the biggest DEC costumer and they also moved 3B series computers because they wanted to be a computer company too. Cost them a lot of money. I think the story of everybody wanted PDPs but cooperate didn't want.
roflmaostc 11mo ago
Whenever I read about Xerox, it reminds me of the story that their scanners would randomly change numbers on prints https://dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning https://dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are...
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  I actually don't expect other scanners to preform differently.
  - roflmaostc 11mo ago
    Why? Can you share any examples?
    - 1718627440 11mo ago
      No, I don't have any. It is because it was not so much a bug, but a decision about a tradeoff. They compressed by unifying similar looking glyphs. Sure, these glyphs weren't representing the same character, but they did look similar. It is the kind of error an human could also have made, except humans also know that sums are supposed to match, so they take that into account when reading. Also they have a probability score and when they are unsure they read again or ask. This are all things these printers can't do without doing supervised OCR. The tested scans did look kind of crappy, so if you care about non altered glyphs maybe don't do a lossy compression on a low resolution scan. So these issue can totally happen with any printer if your resolution is too low, the glyphs are ambigous and you use a too aggressive lossy compression. This also happens with other approaches like vectorization or OCR.
      - panick21_ 11mo ago
        Yes and by default your tradeoff should be to have the correct information. And that's actually what Xerox claimed. They said this was false and it was correctly documented. They said only if you select it this would happen. Watch the CCC talk buy the person that figured this out. Turns out they were wrong.
tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
If you want to see what a dismal company Xerox is check its share price over the last fifty years. Even accounting for stock splits and dividends the performance is dire for a technology company.
- ErigmolCt 11mo ago
  That's fair if you look at Xerox through the lens of "tech company returns"
- crawancon 11mo ago
  there are many reasons for this, but I can only comment that they should have left GIS alone, and not let ACS divest. They'd have been stronger this decade with those performing assets. so yeah, thanks Carl.
  - tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
    >They'd have been stronger this decade with those performing assets. Or they might have destroyed them. I wonder how Lexmark is doing under their control.
- justin66 11mo ago
  For someone not inclined to dredge up all that data and do the calculations to factor in dividends, where can we take a look at it? It's a bit of a miracle any technology company that old is still going after all these years. "Dismal" does not seem like an accurate way of characterizing it. (for someone just taking a glance at the stock price chart, which doesn't take into account dividends, it looks like they were performing well financially until COVID?)
  - kevstev 11mo ago
    Easily found on Google finance or similar sites: https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/XRX:NASDAQ?sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwifnoPB_L-RAxW3F1kFHVRxJ3UQ3ecFKAR6BAgjEAU&window=MAX https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/XRX:NASDAQ?sa=X&sq... Not quite 50 years, but you get the idea.
ErigmolCt 11mo ago
How hard it is for an organization to be good at both discovery and exploitation at the same time
- pstuart 11mo ago
  In the end it's all about managing the incentives to be aligned -- the exploitation side needs to not consider the discovery side a threat if it challenges their current exploitations.
brianbest101 11mo ago
[dead]
mrbluecoat 11mo ago
Another decent read on this subject is 'Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age' by Michael A. Hiltzik
- ProllyInfamous 11mo ago
  This is my favorite geeky non-fiction book. [•] <https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887308910/ https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...> In addition to all the technical detail, you learn so much about corporate hubris in their massive quest for non-innovation (resting on their laurels). C-level staff ignored the brilliance of their Alto computer, invited Steve Jobs over in exchange for a few shares of AAPL IPO [which they almost-immediately sold], and left all their computer researchers scratching their heads as to why staff were being ignored.
  - panick21_ 11mo ago
    Letting in Steve wasn't really an issue. Lisa failed and Mac wasn't a big success until the early 90s. And tons of other people knew what they were doing. Andy Bechtolsheim visited there too. Sun workstation basically did the same thing and were very successful. And its really the PC that would have anyway if they let in Jobs or not.

73 points by rbanffy 11mo ago

Very interesting story and well written so far, I'll finish it after work. One very interesting thing about Xerox was not only their technology but their choice of business model. As smaller companies couldn't afford an expensive copier, they'd "rent" it and charge per copy. From the article: > The company placed machines in well-traveled public spaces where it was on display, and in addition to sales, they also offered machine rental for smaller organizations. This was a low price for up to 2000 copies, and each copy after was 4¢. They also promised that a machine could be returned within fifteen days. The 650 pound behemoth was wildly successful. Another similar interesting business model was pioneered by Rolls-Royce in their airplane turbine business. Instead of selling their whole turbine, they'd "rent" it and charge it "per flight hour", derisking both parts.

ErigmolCt 11mo ago
It's interesting how these models keep reappearing whenever technology gets expensive, complex, and mission-critical

ewa-szyszka 11mo ago

Solid read! I started my career of at a former Xerox R&D that was acquired by NAVER Labs, which is an interesting story in itself of passing of time and the new (AI R&D) replacing the old (print technology): https://www.news.xerox.com/news/NAVER-to-acquire-Xerox-Research-Centre-Europe https://www.news.xerox.com/news/NAVER-to-acquire-Xerox-Resea...

intrasight 11mo ago

My father worked for Haloid for a bit. Worked there while also attending NYU. Layer he moved to Kodak and in 1967 our family moved to Rochester. My father retired from Kodak in 1985. Xerox and Kodak were both amazing companies, and created a comfortable middle or upper middle class lifestyle for many thousands of Rochesterians.

MinimalAction 11mo ago
As someone who has lived in Rochester recently, I am incredibly curious to hear from folks who saw the peak of the city. I often hear of Kodak and Xerox providing hefty bonuses which also made the local businesses offer deals then for a better turnover. Would love to hear more from you.
- intrasight 11mo ago
  The main "hefty bonus" was treating employees exceptionally well and providing a lifetime of employment. And for us kids, it was an idyllic environment in which to grow up.

Stratoscope 11mo ago

> the computer they wanted was DEC PDP-10. At this point, Paul Strassman was replacing every IBM and DEC machine at Xerox with an SDS machine. This scenario must have played out in multiple places. I was involved in one of them. I was working at Tymshare, and we were evaluating the PDP-10 and the Xerox (XDS/SDS) Sigma 7. My manager called me into his office. --- Mike, this conversation is strictly between you and me. If anyone asks, I will deny it happened. You are our best Sigma 7 expert, and even you prefer the PDP-10. We're doing final acceptance tests on the Sigma 7. If all the tests pass, we have to commit to it. If enough tests fail, we can return that machine. --- I got the hint. Challenge accepted! Knowing all the ins and outs of the Sigma 7, I found a few subtle ways to make it crash at random times, without any indication that anyone had interfered with the tests. Eventually I slipped up and left my username visible in a core dump. Back to my manager's office. --- Mike, we have a problem. Xerox figured out that you were messing with the Sigma 7 system software. We told them we would fire you. So, you're fired. You can't be in the office any more. But you do have your Teletype at home, right? You have some projects to do on the PDP-10. Can you work on those and stay away from the Sigma 7? Keep track of your hours, and after this blows over we will hire you back and give you that back pay. --- So I did. And they did!

panick21_ 11mo ago
That's a great story. From the Oral History of Synertek, they wanted to buy some buy some PDP-11 but they had been bought by Honeywell. Honeywell had told them they would not be controlled and have a free hand. Honeywell of course wouldn't not allow it and told them they would get a free Honeywell mainframe. And they got send a mainframe that was completely useless and didn't have any relevant software. So eventually Synertek collapsed and many of those people founded VSLI Technology. At AT&T they bought a lot of PDP-11s, they were the biggest DEC costumer and they also moved 3B series computers because they wanted to be a computer company too. Cost them a lot of money. I think the story of everybody wanted PDPs but cooperate didn't want.

roflmaostc 11mo ago

Whenever I read about Xerox, it reminds me of the story that their scanners would randomly change numbers on prints https://dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning https://dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are...

1718627440 11mo ago
I actually don't expect other scanners to preform differently.
- roflmaostc 11mo ago
  Why? Can you share any examples?
  - 1718627440 11mo ago
    No, I don't have any. It is because it was not so much a bug, but a decision about a tradeoff. They compressed by unifying similar looking glyphs. Sure, these glyphs weren't representing the same character, but they did look similar. It is the kind of error an human could also have made, except humans also know that sums are supposed to match, so they take that into account when reading. Also they have a probability score and when they are unsure they read again or ask. This are all things these printers can't do without doing supervised OCR. The tested scans did look kind of crappy, so if you care about non altered glyphs maybe don't do a lossy compression on a low resolution scan. So these issue can totally happen with any printer if your resolution is too low, the glyphs are ambigous and you use a too aggressive lossy compression. This also happens with other approaches like vectorization or OCR.
    - panick21_ 11mo ago
      Yes and by default your tradeoff should be to have the correct information. And that's actually what Xerox claimed. They said this was false and it was correctly documented. They said only if you select it this would happen. Watch the CCC talk buy the person that figured this out. Turns out they were wrong.

tonyedgecombe 11mo ago

If you want to see what a dismal company Xerox is check its share price over the last fifty years. Even accounting for stock splits and dividends the performance is dire for a technology company.

ErigmolCt 11mo ago
That's fair if you look at Xerox through the lens of "tech company returns"
crawancon 11mo ago
there are many reasons for this, but I can only comment that they should have left GIS alone, and not let ACS divest. They'd have been stronger this decade with those performing assets. so yeah, thanks Carl.
- tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
  >They'd have been stronger this decade with those performing assets. Or they might have destroyed them. I wonder how Lexmark is doing under their control.
justin66 11mo ago
For someone not inclined to dredge up all that data and do the calculations to factor in dividends, where can we take a look at it? It's a bit of a miracle any technology company that old is still going after all these years. "Dismal" does not seem like an accurate way of characterizing it. (for someone just taking a glance at the stock price chart, which doesn't take into account dividends, it looks like they were performing well financially until COVID?)
- kevstev 11mo ago
  Easily found on Google finance or similar sites: https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/XRX:NASDAQ?sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwifnoPB_L-RAxW3F1kFHVRxJ3UQ3ecFKAR6BAgjEAU&window=MAX https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/XRX:NASDAQ?sa=X&sq... Not quite 50 years, but you get the idea.

ErigmolCt 11mo ago

How hard it is for an organization to be good at both discovery and exploitation at the same time

pstuart 11mo ago
In the end it's all about managing the incentives to be aligned -- the exploitation side needs to not consider the discovery side a threat if it challenges their current exploitations.

brianbest101 11mo ago

[dead]

mrbluecoat 11mo ago

Another decent read on this subject is 'Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age' by Michael A. Hiltzik

ProllyInfamous 11mo ago
This is my favorite geeky non-fiction book. [•] <https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887308910/ https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...> In addition to all the technical detail, you learn so much about corporate hubris in their massive quest for non-innovation (resting on their laurels). C-level staff ignored the brilliance of their Alto computer, invited Steve Jobs over in exchange for a few shares of AAPL IPO [which they almost-immediately sold], and left all their computer researchers scratching their heads as to why staff were being ignored.
- panick21_ 11mo ago
  Letting in Steve wasn't really an issue. Lisa failed and Mac wasn't a big success until the early 90s. And tons of other people knew what they were doing. Andy Bechtolsheim visited there too. Sun workstation basically did the same thing and were very successful. And its really the PC that would have anyway if they let in Jobs or not.