Book Description
Dealers of Lightning is the riveting story of the
legendary Xerox PARCa collection of eccentric young inventors
brought together by Xerox Corporation at a facility in Palo
Alto, California, during the mind-blowing intellectual
ferment of the seventies and eighties. Here for the first
time Michael Hiltzik, a correspondent for the Los Angeles
Times, reveals in piercing detail the true story of the
extraordinary group that aimed to bring about a technological
dawn that would change the worldand succeeded.
Based on extensive interviews with the scientists,
engineers, administrators, and corporate executives who lived
the story, Dealers of Lightning takes the read on a
journey from PARC's beginnings in a dusty, abandoned building
at the edge of the Stanford University campus to its triumph
as a hothouse of ideas that spawned not only the first
personal computer, but the windows-style graphical user
interface, the laser printer, much of the indispensable
technology of the Internet, and a great deal more. It shows
how and why Xerox, despite its willingness to grant PARC
unlimited funding and the responsibility for developing
breakthroughs to keep the corporation on the cutting edge of
office technology, remained forever unable to grasp (and,
consequently, exploit) the innovations that PARC deliveredand
it details the increasing frustration of the original PARC
scientists, many of whom would go on to build their fortunes
upon the very ideas Xerox so rashly discarded.
More than just a riveting historical narrative, Dealers
of Lightning brings to life an unforgettable cast of
characters. Among them:
Bob Taylorthe preacher's son from rural Texas who would be
considered a prophet by some and a cantankerous egomaniac by
others, whose fearless (and feared) leadership of a team of
computer renegades made them the heroes of the embryonic
Silicon Valley;
Jack Goldmanthe Xerox chief scientist who convinced the
stolid corporation to stake tens of millions of dollars on
PARC while warning that the investment might not pay off for
yearsif it paid off at all;
Alan KayPARC's creative and philosophical soul, who
suffered years of ridicule for envisioning a computer that
could be tucked under the arm yet would contain the power to
store books, symphonies, letters, poems, and drawingsuntil he
arrived at Palo Alto and met the people who would build it;
and
Steve Jobswho, aided by Xerox's indifference to PARC's
most momentous inventions, staged a daring raid to obtain the
technology that would end up at the heart of the Macintosh:
the machine that for a time helped Apple dominate an
explosive new market.
Dealers of Lightning is an unprecedented look at
the ideas, the inventions, and the individuals that propelled
Xerox PARC to the frontier of technohistoryand the corporate
machinations that almost prevented it from achieving
greatness.
