Dealers of Lightning

PARC was founded by men whose experience had taught them that the only way to get the best research was to hire the best researchers they could find and leave them unbur­dened by directives, instructions, or deadlines. For the most part, the computer engineers of PARC were exempt from corporate impera­tives to improve Xerox's existing products. They had a different charge: to lead the company into new and uncharted territory.

Thacker's designs were simple and spare, devoid of the egotism that often spoiled the work of even the best of his fellow professionals. He was a master of parsimony and the sworn enemy of its opposite, which he called "biggerism." In a Thacker schematic one never found a logic gate or a ground wire out of place, and he policed the work of his col­leagues so they would meet the same exacting standard. Any engineer who set forth a dubious or dishonest idea in PARC's Computer Science Laboratory, where Thacker worked, was likely to be stopped in his tracks by an explosive "Bullshit!" At PARC one found no shortage of big egos and stern judges, but one thing on which all agreed was that once Chuck Thacker pronounced your idea "bullshit," you had best shut up and start shoveling

As for David Kearns

leave, now becam

But these devices were at best state-of-the-art, not ahead of the art.

The Big Machine

Alvy Ray Smith

But Ingalls was

On the Lunatic Fringe

This is the story