66 a prophet of biblical dimensions: Kay, The Early History of Smalltalk, p. 7 (in manuscript) (henceforth Smalltalk).
67 rats running in his maze: Smokey Wallace, 11/16/97.
Chapter 5: Berkeley's Second System
74 The second is the most dangerous: Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, p. 55.
Chapter 6: "Not Your Normal Person"
80 Alan believed his role: Harrold, "The Organ at the Alan Kay & Bonnie MacBird Residence," in The American Organ Academy Newsletter, Winter 1996.
85 Computers' use of symbols: Kay, "Microelectronics and the Personal Computer," Scientific American, Sept. 1977, p. 244.
86 By the time I got to school: Shasta and Lazere, Out of Their Minds (1995), pp. 39-40.
89 As he toiled in Chippewa: Kay, S7nalltalk, p. 4.
90 Take this and read it: Ibid., p. 5.
91 you had to understand that: Shasta and Lazere, p. 42.
91 like seeing a glimpse of heaven: Palfreman & Swade, p. 96.
Minsky's "terrific diatribe": Kay, p.9.
The best outputs: Kay, "Microelectronics and the Personal Computer," p. 127.
92 If the medium: Kay and Goldberg, "Personal Dynamic Media," in Goldberg (ed.), A Histonj of Personal Workstations, p. 256.
93 users found repellent: Kay quoted in Rheingold, Tools for Thought, Chapter 11 (Internet version, unpaged).
94 The big whammy: Kay, The Early History of Smalltalk, pp. 9-10.
Chapter 7: The Clone
99 I must be on every sucker list: New York Times, 6/26/72.
99 We sold them a dead horse: DeLamarter, Big Blue, p. 100.
99 He denied: Palevsky interview, 4/21/98.
100 Palevsky fantasizes about IBM: "Xerox-SDS: Marriage That Was Meant to Be?" Los Angeles Times, 2/11/69.
100 Telling McColough what he wanted to hear: Palevsky interview, 4/21/98.
101 IBM and competitors' financial results: Delamarter, p. 352.
110 Intel's problems with the 1103: Jackson, Inside Intel, p. 79.
111 Pake memo to management: Smith & Alexander, Fumbling the Future, pp. 145-146; Pake interview, 5/19/97.
Chapter 8: The Future Invented
118 The IMPs formed a subnetwork: Hafner & Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, p. 80.
118 Jerry was not universally liked: Severo Ornstein Oral History, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.
122 Pendery really didn't understand ... to invent it: Kay, Smalltalk, p. 13.
Chapter 9: The Refugee
143 A bunch of horse's asses: Perry & Wallich, p. 67.
143 It was Monday night: Goldman interview, 5/6/97.
144 Jack Lewis saving the 9700: Harold Hall, personal communication.
Chapter ID: Beating the Dealer
152 continuous form of peer review: Thacker, "The Alto and Ethernet Hardware," in Goldberg, p. 268.
Chapter 11: Spacewar
160-161 I recall almost a sadness: Perry & Wallich, p. 72; Thornburg, 9/12/97.
Chapter 12: Thacker's Bet
163 Thacker-Lampson-Kay conversation: Kay, Smalltalk, p. 18.
164 Origin of "Smalltalk" name: Ibid., p. 14. 164 Kay meeting with Elkind: Ibid., p. 16.
166 What's a budget: Ibid., p. 19; English, 5/21/97.
169 Chronology of the Alto design: Kay, Smalltalk, p. 19; Thacker, in Goldberg, p. 274.
170 Ron Rider ... put it together himself: Perry & Wallich, p. 66. The manager quoted was Bert Sutherland.
170 quality of man-machine interaction: Thacker in Goldberg, p. 272.
Chapter 13: The Bobbsey Twins Build a Network
179 He padded over: Metcalfe, "How Ethernet Was Invented," in IEEE
Annals of the History of Computing, vol 16, no. 4, p. 84.
179 The first time I ever heard: Ted Kaehler, 4/18/97.
185 The ultimate 29-Nova: Metcalfe, p. 83.
185 too many moving parts: Ibid.
187 luminiferous aether: Ibid.
189 There was no chip . . . every piece of it: Ibid., p. 84; Metcalfe, 9/15/97.
191 Ethernet was up against: Ibid., p. 86.
192 One after another of my colleagues: Ibid., p. 87.
Chapter 14: What You See Is What You Get
195 All this was very exhilarating: Lammers, Programmers at Work, p. 9.
196 with an incredible headache: Ibid., p. 8.
Chapter 15: On the Lunatic Fringe
211 The graphics researcher . . . e-mail message: Perry & Wallich, p. 68.
212 Warren Teitelman once returned: Ibid., p. 68.
213 Millions of people: Lampson, guest editorial in Software-Practice and Experience, vol. 2, pp. 195-196.
218 With as much panache: Kay, Smalltalk, p. 18.
225 Article in New West: Johnston, "Will Your Next Home Appliance Be a Mini-Computer?" in New West, 3/14/1977, p. 50. Goldman's memo was dated March 1, 1977.
Chapter IB: The Pariahs
237 Here's our stuff: Perry & Wallich, p. 68; Alvy Ray Smith, 12/5/97.
Chapter 17: The Big Machine
245 friendly, direct: Hall, personal communication.
247 Its target users: "The New Lean, Mean Xerox," Business Week,
.10/12/81, p. 129. 247 We'll just lose: Spinrad, 10/16/97.
254 Committee for Green Foothills: "Xerox Deal May Settle Dispute on Coyote Hill," Palo Alto Times, 9/21/72, p. 1.
255 The local newspapers: "Xerox Scientists in Palo Alto Preparing for Office of Future," Palo Alto Times, 1/24/75, p. 6.
255 The stock: Kearns & Nadler, Prophets in the Dark, p. 88. 255 Corporate legend has it: Currie, 6/2/97. 255-256 Odyssey's conclusion: Kearns, p. 87.
Chapter IB: Futures Day
263 Potter's visit to PARC: Smith and Alexander, Fumbling the Future, p. 168.
huge blow: Kay, Smalltalk, p. 32.
Ellenby responded: Geschke, 10/16/97.
269 Moses was supposed to: Jacobson & Hillkirk, p. 75.
270 We are being out-marketed .. . within this company: Smith & Alexander, p. 197; Kearns & Nadler, p. 100.
270 The architecture of information: Smith & Alexander, p. 201.
271 this part of the demonstration: Ellenby, 10/15/97.
Chapter 19: Future Plus Dne
276 The small fonts: Kay, Smalltalk, p. 35.
278 The place . . . just sort of drifted: Kearns & Nadler, p. 103.
279 He'd come into my office: McCreight, 10/7/97. 281 He chose to buy time: Smith & Alexander, p. 244.
285-286 Carter would hop ... we don't act on hunches: Kearns & Nadler, pp. 40^1.
287 Wenrik tested it against the judgments: Smith & Alexander, p. 213.
Chapter 20: The Worm That Ate the Ethernet
291 The black hole of computer science: Bert Sutherland, 4/14/97.
293 PUP "inspired" TCP/IP: Hafner & Lyon, p. 237.
296 In the middle of the night . . . vampire: Shoch & Hupp, "The 'Worm' Programs—Early Experience with a Distributed Computation," in Communications of the ACM, March 1992, p. 173.
296 Profoundly antisocial act: Ibid., p. 173.
297 workers running around: Ibid., p. 176.
298 The embarrassing results: Ibid., p. 176.
Chapter 21: The Silicon Revolution
302 Create some havoc: Perry & Wallich, p. 73.
304 This worked fine: Mead, Carver, & Ivan Sutherland, "Microelectronics and Computer Science," in Scientific American, Sept. 1977.
304 to perform individual steps: Ibid.
310 Their collaboration: The Mead-Conway text was published in 1979 by Addison-Wesley as Introduction to VLSI Systems.
311 I love the metric: Goldberg, Michael, "Fire in the Valley," in Wired, June 1994.
Chapter 22: The Crisis of Biggerism
315 I counted . . . know them: Kay, Smalltalk, p. 27.
315 For any given pursuit: Ibid., p. 26.
315 As Adele kept reminding: Ibid., p. 27.
316 A remarkable number . . . feeling it: Ibid., p. 28.
317 There were no shouting matches . . . professional imperatives: Ibid., pp. 29-30.
319 a 747 taking off: Thacker in Goldberg, p. 285.
320 He was the son of... on geology: Hafner & Lyon, p. 95.
321 Look, Severo ... lie to them: Ornstein, 4/15/97.
321 it'll be a long time: Tesler, 4/23/97.
322 It was easy to set: Sosinski, Charles, and Herb Yeary: "Flaming Dorados and Other Stories" in The Analytical Engine 2.1, February 1995 (Computer History Association of California).
325 Cost of Dorado and comparison to VAX: Thacker in Goldberg, p. 285.
325 Cost of VAX: Bell, Gordon, in Goldberg, p. 45.
325 It was difficult to think: Thacker in Goldberg, p. 285.
326 They were such an efficient heater: Sosinski.
327 Xerox executives made: Perry & Wallich, p. 73.
Chapter 23: Steve Jobs Gets His Show and Tell
You can have your Lufthansa heist: Steven Levy, Insanely Great, p. 78.
Joe Wilson had predicted: Jacobson & Hillkirk,, p. 58.
331 The answer was to create: George White, 10/6/97.
332 When the company raised $7 million: Michael Moritz, The Little Kingdom, p. 271.
332 Raskin recollection of Jobs and Wozniak: Raskin, "Mac and Me," in The Analytical Engine 2.4, November 1995 (Computer History Association of California).
Chapter 24: Supernova
346 you gotta be here in Connecticut: Pake, 5/19/97. 349 office systems will never amount: Hall, private communication. 350-351 my junior on the board: Smith & Alexander, p. 216. 358-359 I projected supreme confidence: Simonyi, 12/4/97.
359 Bill has to see this: Manes & Andrews, p. 166.
360 Gates at PARC: Ibid., p. 167.
360 Gates could read the program: Ibid., p. 167. 360 messenger RNA: Simonyi, 12/4/97.
Chapter 25: Hlindsided
363 I had not spent. . . marketplace: Smith & Alexander, p. 229. 363 I think we have another 914: "The New Lean, Mean Xerox," in Business Week, 10/12/81, p. 132. 365 When everything in a computer system: David C. Smith in Jeff Johnson et. al, "The Xerox Star: A Retrospective," in IEEE Computer, September 1989, p. 15. 367 It's a good product: Business Week, 10/12/81, p. 132. 369-370 Everything you've ever done: Belleville in Manes & Andrews, p. 224.
Chapter 2G: Exit the Impresario
381 My response . . . not me: Taylor, 5/1/98.
382 Most people spend: Smith & Alexander, p. 253.
383 You can fucking resign!-. Sosinski & Yeary.
386 Olson conversation with Kearns: Kearns & Nadler, p. 104.
Epilogue: Did Xerox Blow It?
389 Xerox could have owned: Triumph of the Nerds, broadcast on PBS
6/12/96. 397 We didn't want: Stross.Glossary of Selected Terms
ARPA: The Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, established after the Soviet Sputnik launch of 1957 to marshal America's scientific resources in a research counterattack. By the mid-1960s the principal source of funding for computer science in U.S. academia.
ARPANET: The Pentagon-financed system interconnecting incompatible mainframe computers at research centers and universities across the country; in time evolved into the Internet.
ASCII: The "American Standard Code for Information Interchange," a table of 128 simple letters, numerals, and other characters, each of which can be encoded in seven binary digits, or bits; until the emergence of WYSIWYG displays, ASCII text was the standard, charmless format of computer display and printing.
Bit: From "binary digit," the smallest unit of information that can be read or used by a digital computer. A bit can be set to one of two values, often signified by 0 or 1, true or false, or yes or no.
Bitmap: A display in which each dot, or pixel, on the screen corresponds to one or more bits in computer memory. Thus turning on a pattern of bits in memory can create a corresponding image on the screen. Because of the speed at which it can be altered, the bitmapped display is the essential element of graphical user interfaces like those developed at PARC.
Boolean functions: The mathematical and logical elements at the heart of digital computing. Boolean functions are based on two values, usually represented as true and false. An AND function, or AND gate in a computers circuitry, for example, will return a "true" value only if both of its inputs are "true," and a "false" value in all other cases. The NOT function returns the converse of its input—• "true" if the input is "false," and vice versa. From such trivial functions and their cousins machines can be built that add, subtract, multiply, divide, and do much more.
Byte: A string of eight bits (by current convention) large enough to encode a single character or symbol to be input to a computer or output to its display.
Central processing unit: The brains of a computer, which supervises such other parts (or "peripherals") as the disk drives and printers and controls their access to memory and display.
Internet: Capitalized, the worldwide network of research and commercial computer sites that grew out of the ARPANET. Lower case, any interconnection of discrete local networks.
Killer app: Abridgment of "killer application." Any program that so perfectly exploits its hardware that it radically speeds the hardware's adoption. Examples include the Bravo word processing program, which ran on the Alto, and VisiCalc, the digital spreadsheet that made the Apple II computer a coveted business tool.
Kludge (pronounced "klooge"): An overelaborate and frequently temperamental device or system, often one designed or built over time to serve incrementally broadened or inconsistent goals. Think Rube Goldberg.
LAN: "Local Area Network." A network of adjacent and usually compatible computers, often within a single building or a one-kilometer radius. Numerous rival LAN designs emerged during the 1970s, often promoted by individual computer companies to lock customers into using their proprietary machines (as with IBM and the "token ring"). Ethernets standardization after 1980 made it the most common.
Moore's Law: The principle articulated by Gordon Moore in 1965 that computing power would exponentially increase in performance and diminish in cost over the years along a predictable curve, so that digital memory costing $500,000 in 1965 would come all the way down to a few hundred dollars by 1998. This is the force behind the unprecedented influence technology exerts over modern life.
Second system: From Frederick Brooks's The Mythical Man-Month. The often-unsuccessful sequel to a successful first project, whether this is a machine, program, novel, or building. As Brooks noted, second systems tend to incorporate all the extras that a creative team was forced by penury or haste to leave out of their first. The result is a product that is overly complicated, overly expensive, and late.
TCP/IP: "Transmission Control Protocol over Internet Protocol." The set of standardized rules for the transmission of data over networks that allows disparate computer systems to remain synchronized enough to communicate reliably with each other. The "IP" element grew out of PARC's development of the PUP, or "PARC Universal Packet," which allowed Xerox offices with incompatible computers to communicate with each other.
Time-sharing: A system allowing several users to run programs simultaneously on one computer without interfering with each other. When computers were costly and centralized machines, this was the standard means of accessing computer resources. Technologies such as the personal computer made time-sharing obsolete.
VLSI: "Very Large Scale Integration." The incorporation of millions of transistors in a single integrated circuit, or chip, to provide computing power a quantum leap beyond that previously available. VLSI's offspring include the Pentium family of chips powering many of today's personal computers and laptops. The design principles of VLSI were pioneered by researchers working at PARC and the California Institute of Technology.
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