laser-lovers@uw-beaver (03/19/85)
From: Les Earnest <LES@SU-AI.ARPA> Responding to the discussion on the fate of the Dovers, as long as we are lamenting a possible lack of vision on the part of Xerox management let me point out that based on available technology, the history of computer page printers could (and should) have been quite different, but a giant-sized opportunity was missed. Around 1960 when I was doing some research using the TX-2 computer at MIT Lincoln Lab, a fellow there bought a Xerox office copier (I think it was the 914), attached a Charactron CRT, and built a computer interface that turned it into a handy printer that could do both text and vector graphics. That printer was absolutely great compared with anything that we had seen or used! The Flexowriter that had been used for listings promptly fell into disuse and we all started doing more computer graphics work because we could now print copies of our handiwork. One of the PhD students named Ivan Sutherland did a rather nice graphics program called "Sketchpad." After we had used the xerographic printer for awhile, some part of Xerox management was invited in to look it over. It was strongly suggested to them that this would be a wonderful computer peripheral and that they were in a good position to develop such a product. Their response was something like "That's interesting." They then went away and were never seen again. Around 1969, Xerox introduced a high speed facsimile system called LDX that used a CRT-based xerographic printer. After it failed commercially, Xerox generously made the printer available to various universities, renaming it the XGP (for Xerox Graphics Printer). We got one at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971 and had a great time with it. Around 1972 Xerox brought out a CRT-based xerographic printer product that had many of the properties that the TX-2 device had demonstrated over a decade earlier. They may have been working on a computer printer all that time, but I suspect that this one was an independent outgrowth of their facsimile work. If the Xerox people had realized the value of the idea that was offered to them earlier and had develped xerographic printers in the early '60s, the history of computer printers would have been quite different. I believe that there would be few electrographic printer-plotters today if that marking technology had to compete with xerography, as it did in the copier market (and lost). The development of line printers would probably have been quite different -- the modern high performance printers would probably never have been developed in the face of superior xerographic technology. (No, you don't have to have impact printers to make multiple copies.) While Xerox owed its very existance to innovative technology in the beginning and had grown enormously because of the successful development of that technology, as they became large the higher levels of management appeared to lose the ability to understand evolving technologies other than the one they had mastered. In the 1950s and 60s, Xerox was widely believed to be among the best-managed companies in the U.S. and their financial performance bore that out. But being good at management is not necessarily the same as being good at understanding new technology, as Xerox amply demonstrated when they attempted to buy into the computer equipment market in the late '60s. Had they capitalized on the opportunity, Xerox probably would have captured a large segment of the computer printer market and made quite a lot of money on xerographic printers from 1962 on. If this had happened, the computer community would have experienced a more stimulating environment than the one that actually developed. For example, the state of the art in computer graphics would likely have been more advanced than it is today. It is not often that a blunder as large and clear as that one is visible. Add it to the list of missed opportunities. Les Earnest