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Michael A. Hiltzik

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Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age Paperback – April 5, 2000

by Michael A. Hiltzik (Author)

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In the bestselling tradition of The Soul of a New Machine, Dealers of Lightning is a fascinating journey of intellectual creation. In the 1970s and '80s, Xerox Corporation brought together a brain-trust of engineering geniuses, a group of computer eccentrics dubbed PARC. This brilliant group created several monumental innovations that triggered a technological revolution, including the first personal computer, the laser printer, and the graphical interface (one of the main precursors of the Internet), only to see these breakthroughs rejected by the corporation. Yet, instead of giving up, these determined inventors turned their ideas into empires that radically altered contemporary life and changed the world.

Based on extensive interviews with the scientists, engineers, administrators, and executives who lived the story, this riveting chronicle details PARC's humble beginnings through its triumph as a hothouse for ideas, and shows why Xerox was never able to grasp, and ultimately exploit, the cutting-edge innovations PARC delivered. Dealers of Lightning offers an unprecedented look at the ideas, the inventions, and the individuals that propelled Xerox PARC to the frontier of technohistoiy--and the corporate machinations that almost prevented it from achieving greatness.

Print length

480 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Business
Publication date

April 5, 2000
Dimensions

5.31 x 1.09 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0887309895
ISBN-13

978-0887309892
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Read this book. A treat for anyone with even a passing interest in the origins of today's siliconized culture."--"Business Week

About the Author

Michael A. Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Los Angeles Times. In 2004 he won a Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in American financial journalism. Hiltzik is the author of Dealers of Lightning: Xerox Parc and the Dawn of the Computer Age and A Death in Kenya. He lives in Southern California with his wife and two sons.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Business (April 5, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0887309895
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0887309892
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 1.09 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #352,637 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #80 in Computing Industry History
- #320 in Computers & Technology Industry
- #616 in Company Business Profiles (Books)

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Lauren Warner

Great read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 12, 2022

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I grew up with this crew as my mother was Dr. Pake's executive assistant. She's scream being referred to as his secretary! We left Rochester NY for my mother's being promoted to this position. I got to see first hand all the genius of what was created here. I was invited to "play" with a lot of what was being developed before the rest of the world knew anything about any of it. I babysat for a lot of these people's kids. My mother was incredibly "close" to Dr. Pake besides being his Executive Assistant. It nearly distroyed him when she took her life. Dr. Pake was a very good man and a close friend who my mother connected to Xerox referred to him as "the good Doctor" and that he was! Such an incredible true story that most of the world does not know. The beginnings of what we all assume started somewhere else...Apple. lol

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James J. Horning

A gripping tale about historic computing research.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 26, 1999

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If you read only one book about research management, researchers, or computing research this year, this is the one to read.
Dealers of Lightning is the story of the seminal first 13 years of Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Center, a period in which PARC developed laser printers, the ethernet, internets, networked personal computers, the client-server model, bitmap displays, icons and graphical user interfaces, the desktop metaphor and overlapping windows, and various other foundations of the computing world as we know it today. But this is not primarily a book about technology -- it is about the people who generated it: How they were brought together, how they interacted, and finally, how they dispersed.
Michael Hiltzik is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and he has clearly done his homework. He seems to have talked to all the major (and many of the minor) figures involved, read everything that has been written on the subject, and understood most of it. There are ample footnotes, source citations, glossary, and acknowledgements. Some of his accounts are as close to definitive as we are ever likely to see. For example, his story of the famous demos for Steve Jobs that had such an influence on the Lisa and the Macintosh (while recognizing that participants recollections conflict) has more information about them than I was able to gather while at PARC.
As an "unindicted co-conspirator," neither interviewed by Hiltzik, nor mentioned by name (although I was close to the epicenter for the last half of the book's time span), I have both inside information and personal biases. I spotted a few small factual errors, and in some cases my interpretation of events is different than Hiltzik's. Nevertheless, he has done an amazingly good job of capturing the gist. This book is more complete, more accurate, and more nuanced than Smith and Alexander's Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer.
Hiltzik is an excellent writer, and the book is a page-turner (even when you know how it ends). The plot is gripping; the cast of characters large and interesting. Parts of the book are too incredible to be published as fiction. I stayed up well past my bedtime three different nights, repeatedly promising myself I'd read "just one more chapter."
My main complaint is that the book is so crowded with people and events that almost all the characters come out one-dimensional, often associated with a single recurring tag phrase. Bob Taylor at least gets a two-dimensional treatment, but it is too often through the eyes of his (numerous) enemies; the admiration and loyalty he inspired in many others is frequently remarked on, but never explained.
The book is littered with insights about research and technology transfer -- both from the characters in the book and from Hiltzik. There are stimulating comments on what worked, and what did not, and why. Of course, I don't agree with all of them, but formulating convincing counter-arguments can be quite challenging and instructive.
I particularly recommend the Epilogue, "Did Xerox Blow It?" Unfortunately, it really needs to be read in the context of the entire book. I first tried reading it out of order, and it didn't have the same force.
Hiltzik discusses fairly even-handedly Steve Jobs's claim that "Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry today. Could have been, you know, a company ten times its size. Could have been IBM--could have been the IBM of the nineties. Could have been the Microsoft of the nineties." After weighing the pros and cons, Hiltzik concludes that it's not clear that Xerox could have ridden the tiger to that kind of success -- even if it had avoided all its known blunders.
Hiltzik also points out that laser printing alone repaid the cost of PARC many times over, and that no company can expect to exploit every worthwhile thing that comes out of a research laboratory.

26 people found this helpful

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James B. Delong

My Mileage Was Low...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 27, 1999

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As always your mileage may vary. My mileage was low.
I ended Michael Hiltzik's book on Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center and the invention of the computer technologies we use today disappointed. Hiltzik spent too little time on the ideas and technologies, and too much time on the personalities and the intra-Xerox bureaucratic infighting. That might have been OK if his discussions of just why Xerox never brought so much PARC research to market were accurate, or coherent. But it seems to me that his discussions of Xerox bureaucracy and PARC personalities deconstruct themselves: the evidence he presents simply doesn't justify the conclusions that he reaches.
For example, as his book heads for a conclusion--at the top of page 391--he attacks the idea that by failing to develop into products even a quarter of the technologies produced by PARC Xerox "fumbled the future." He says that "technology foils its tamers" and that conclusions that Xerox failed "rest... on several very questionable assumptions."
But the story that Hiltzik tells is not one in which Xerox makes defensible but wrong decisions, but one in which Xerox does not even try to market what became the key technologies of Apple, Adobe, 3Com, Microsoft and others--and markets the PARC-invented laser printer only after great internal corporate resistance, and only after unnecessary multi-year delays. To squander a five- to ten-year lead because your internal bureaucratic processes cannot recognize an opportunity is, indeed, to "fumble the future."
Along his way Hiltzik makes what seem to me to be simple mistakes of fact and grave errors of logic that cast doubt on his overall reliability. Why claim that when Xerox introduced the Star computer at the beginning of the 1980s that "...no independent software industry existed at the time. (It would not emerge until the mid-1980s.)" What were Microsoft and VisiCorp and Digital Research selling then? Chopped liver? Why was IBM simultaneously developing an open-architecture PC to try to take advantage of the independent hardware and software industry? If there was no independent software industry, then why did IBM go outside its organization--to an independent software manufacturer--for both the operating system and an application suite for its first PC?
Hiltzil claims that "critics of [Xerox's] handling of PARC" "rarely acknowledge" an important burden imposed on Xerox: "the merciless business environment," and that this merciless business environment was a key factor keping Xerox from commercializing the technologies invented at PARC. He writes that:
..Japanese competitors [making copiers] appeared in force in 1975, Xerox did not introduce a low-cost machine to rival theirs until four years later.... [Xerox executives] Peter McColough and David Kearns, embroiled in the fight of their lives simply to protect the copier franchise, had scarcely any patience for... solutions... for the tough problem of technology transfer at PARC (p. 394).
This makes me scratch my head. Hiltzil writes that Xerox's organization was incompetent at product development in their core business--photocopiers: they can't respond to a competitive threat in less than four years. And Hiltzil claims that because Xerox was incompetent in its core business its managers should not be criticized for incompetence at managing the technologies developed by PARC. Can he possibly be serious?
And on the very next page there seems to be a serious, serious misconstrual of a quotation from Adobe Systems founder Chuck Geschke. Geschke says that:
Our attitude at PARC was sort of that it was a higher calling to do pure research. But here at Adobe our advanced technology group does not just stay in advanced technology. If they put together the germ of an idea and start to get it close to prototyping and even decide to turn it into a product, we encourage them to follow it all the way through to first customer shipment. The only way I know to transfer technology is with people.
Hiltzik uses this as a springboard to say that fomer PARC researchers "who have gone on to chair their own corporations... would not dare to grant their employees the same latitude" that Xerox granted them (p. 396). What he doesn't say in his concluding chapter is that Geschke and his partner John Warnock tried to follow their ideas "through to first customer shipment." They spent two years of their lives trying to get Xerox to turn their ideas--incorporated in the page description language Interpress--into a product. And after two years Warnock and Geschke had a conversation, which Warnock recounts as:
...we've spent two years of our life trying to sell this thing and [Xerox is] going to put it under a black shroud for another five." You were seeing PCs get announced, and Apples, and you kept asking yourself "When is all this great stuff going to see the light of day?" And you'd think about the Xerox infrastructure and the process it would have to go through to get into products, and it became sort of depressing (p. 374).
Does Hiltzik think that by the time we reach page 396 we will have forgotten what Hiltzik quoted on page 374? That we will fail to realize that what Geschke is offering his employees--the ability to ship products--is what Geschke desperately wanted to see happen at PARC? That Geschke would have eagerly traded some of his "latitude" at PARC for a Xerox that would actually use Interpress in some products?
If the history of corporate and research bureaucracy in this book didn't ring false, I would be saying that this is a very good book. If the history of technology in the book were better, I would say that this is a very good book--even with a history of bureaucracy that rings false.
As I said, your mileage may vary.
But my mileage was low.

31 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

J. Bond

High Hopes

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 16, 2013

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This is one of those classic reads of Computing history, mentioned and commented in other works as "the only definitive coverage of the history of Xerox Parc", which it is, but somehow its not perfect.

I'm not arguing with the history, people or recollections, I'm arguing about the writing style, the guy might have been a Pulitzer prize winning journalist, but his narrative and writing style in this book is not conducive to reading and getting to the meat of the story. It spends a long time name dropping and focussing on one item, but them skirts others.

There's no in depth technical coverage of the creation of things, like the Marx computer, or the Alto, its all about the people - which is fine - but if I want to know about anyone other than Bob Taylor there's plenty of other items out there about the creation of the internet and ethernet and other things which came out of parc - like the writing of Bob Cringley and others.

So I'd say I expected more technical nuances to come out of this title, but they weren't there.

So, a good read, but not perfect.

4 people found this helpful

Watford1975

Fascinating insight into one of the worlds biggest ever corporate screw-ups.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 20, 2016

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Fascinating insight into one of the worlds biggest ever corporate screw-ups.

Hector

was probably cool

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 15, 2016

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but very dated now

Sameer Kumar

Utterly fascinating. A brilliant book

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on April 23, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is one of the most fascinating books I've read in the last few years. For anyone interested in how technology developed from the 1960s to the 1980s, and getting to know the fabulous cast of characters who pushed development, this book is an absolute must-read. Do note, however, that it's a substantial piece of work and most readers will need to invest a fair bit of time - and put in some effort - in order to fully comprehend each chapter thoroughly. Personally, I enjoyed it a lot. Highly recommended 👍👍

Jim Odell

Blown cover

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 8, 2015

Verified Purchase

This journal clears up some the myths about Xerox ceding the lead in the tech race of the 70s and 80s. It covers the eureka moments and some whimsical moments as well.
The biggest problem I had was having to run the Kindle app on my Windows Ten machine cause the Fruit machines balked at the task.

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