Inventing the Future

by Albert Cory, Jonathan Sainsbury (Illustrator), Scott McKellen (Photographer)

Imagine a time before everyone stared at a screen, before fonts, icons, mice, and laser printers, before Apple and Microsoft… But behind the scenes, Xerox engineers were dreaming and inventing the modern personal computer.

Who were these people who changed the world, and why did corporate management just want to sell copiers and printers?

Albert Cory* was one of the engineers, charged with making that dream a reality and unknowingly starting a revolution. Inventing the Future is based on the true story of the Xerox Star, the computer that changed everything.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

404 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 10, 2021

About the author

I grew up on the far South Side of Chicago, where both my parents had grown up as well; in fact, I went to the same high school that both of them attended (Fenger, whose most famous alumnus was Eliot Ness). My two brothers were much older than I was, so I was practically an only child. I went to the library religiously. I graduated third in a high school class of 729.

When I started college, as the first of my family to attend college, I was an Electrical Engineering major. After 8 weeks I had switched into Psychology, which horrified my parents. I was never really a science nerd, though, and didn’t like the Chemistry and Physics courses. Nonetheless, after a year of Psych, I decided I wanted to have a job when I left school, and I switched again into Mathematics and Computer Science. This worked for me, and I stuck with it all the way to a Master's in Computer Science, also at the U of I.

My first job was at Burroughs in Irvine, California (after a short purgatory in Detroit). After three years there, I was lucky enough to be hired at Xerox to work on the Star, which is the subject of my book Inventing the Future. “Dan Markunas,” one of the main characters, is modelled on me. The name was chosen because it’s Lithuanian, which was my Dad’s ancestry.

The Star effort was still the best job I ever had, and it probably spoiled me for all other jobs.

Reviews

[Dirk Kabcenell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I start, a disclaimer: I worked on this project at Xerox in El Segundo during much of the time covered by the book, and directly with the author for a portion of that time. I had the opportunity to read an advance review copy.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It reminds me of "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder in bringing to life the ups and downs of a difficult engineering project, although one difference is that that book portrayed the real characters involved. Although I joined after the earliest unformed years of the Star project, I can say that the events portrayed are described in a way that matches my recollection. More importantly, the book captures the feel of the place -- the sense that we were privileged to be doing something new and important, the very smart people we worked with, the tension of competing points of view on product direction, the excitement of the National Computer Conference launch, and the weird hybrid structure of a relatively free-wheeling advanced development organization sitting inside a highly structured company. It brings back a lot of good memories, including memories of good and not-always-good people. Although the main characters are composites -- I know because bits and pieces of me showed up -- some of the other "fictional" characters will be easily recognized by people who were there at the time.

As in "The Soul of a New Machine", some of the events and controversies were highly technical. Someone who is not a software person will probably not understand the details of these, but I think they'll be enjoyable anyway. And if not, they aren't the lion's share of the book.

I was not very plugged into the politics during my time at the company but I do think the author was a bit generous to the SDD team at the expense of corporate Xerox. It is true that Xerox didn't really know what to do with this product, but ill-advised product direction also played a part in the product's inability to find a market -- most notably, in my opinion, its conception as a closed system that would only ever run Xerox-provided software. If third-party vendors had been able to provide specialized software for high-value applications, the Star workstation might have been more marketable even at its high initial price. Think about how Tesla entered the market with an expensive sports car, and then moved to less expensive vehicles. We'll never know...

[Anjana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book a while ago, and in this duration, I have considered how to frame my review multiple times. This book represents life at Xerox, and by extension, Tech-based California in the late 1970s. I use the word 'represents' because the author chose to write the narrative by creating two characters who are composites of other people and himself to better show the day-to-day working at Xerox and the complications within.
To people who have had even a remotely technical education, the position of Xerox is known to some extent. The name was synonymous with booths that produce copies in India, which I continue to use now reflexively. This usage is also addressed here.
One of the main qualms I had with the reading was this style of showing two characters but going back and forth with postscripts to better understand the 'actual' position of things at any given time. This happens a lot, and I remember feeling very strongly that the author could have written a non-fiction narrative with a better flow. At least, that's how it felt for a serious fiction reader. On further thought, however, I did not see how he could have given us some of the angles he addressed if it was a non-fiction book.
The writing was good and engaging, but the back and forth between the real situations detailed in the postscript was sometimes enjoyable and sometimes not. It would and should interest people who live and work in the bay area now because the story in this book is a forerunner for everything that determined the lifestyles and the choices people made then.
The author does not directly point out any mistakes or bad handling in this story. Instead, he shows two completely different viewpoints by the time the book reaches its end.
It was slow going, and I had to skim the coding discussions because I do not know enough to appreciate the conversation. Despite that, I was invested in how things would turn out the further into the narrative I went.

I do not know if I would recommend it to my friends in the broader fields of topics detailed here, primarily because of the narrative style, but if any of them see this review and think they might like it - they just might!

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

[Bob Cherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful and accurate description of the work environment at Xerox during the peak of the corporation's golden years. So much innovation and invention took place at PARC, SDD, and other units. This was a different world than today. I worked at Xerox during that time both in El Segundo and in Palo Alto. This was a world where innovation and invention reigned supreme. Sharing was encouraged, not hidden. Cooperation across business units happened openly and freely. The author did a fine job in capturing the essence of this era. While the book may be fiction, the work environment it describes was very real.

This story captured the expansive void between the innovators and the senior management of the day. The "toner heads" didn't understand what lay before them even though their own people used them. They certainly didn't have a clue how to market it. While the product was excellent, the obstruction by management and and marketing to deliver it to a market that was hungry for the technology, was never overcome. If they possessed the vision of Steve Jobs, I have little doubt that Xerox would have become the world's leader in personal computing. This story captured that this feeling was felt throughout the entire Star program -- great product and play but Xerox would fumble the ball.

This book is a great reminder for those of us who where there and watched it all evolve and come to light. From seeing an 8010 playing Pink Floyd in stereo to those of us who went to Slick Track during lunch, and playing games across the campus on our Altos, it is meaningful. However, there is a lot of terminology and technical detail in these pages that an non-technical reader may find boring and not meaningful. Those of us who were at the Xerox during this era will certainly appreciate much of this inside look but, the code, tech terms and such will probably overwhelm a casual non-tech reader.

I want to thank the author first for writing this book and also for the opportunity to review this book with an advance copy through Book Funnel. While I didn't work directly with the author, our paths certainly crossed many times during those years. My team's contribution was the Optical Mouse that shipped with Star. Someone decided that after we did the mouse that Star would ship with them. After the problems with the ball mice and dirt, that was probably a wise decision.

[Knucklehead Smiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a prerelease (near final) copy of the book and also worked for Xerox in El Segundo on the same project where much of this story takes place although although I worked there after the events in this book. Much of the story matches the stories I heard from colleagues and what I experienced myself working for the company and how this division was very different from the rest of Xerox. Although this is a functional story it is based in factual history and I recognize many of the characters (or character hybrids) in this tale.

The book is well written and mostly an easy read. One or two small parts delve into some software details that a non-software engineer might gaze over but it is very brief and not critical to understand but more just is there to show some of the unique aspects of what was being done.

I agree with the sentiment I’ve read in the other early reviews and the reference to Soul of a New Machine (however it does not match the tension I remember when reading Kidders book) and rather than repeat the other reviews I’ll add one thing that was not mentioned.

For me I think the author captures well how working for a non-aerospace company felt during those years. Not only did I work for Xerox, I spent the summers that overlap the time frame in this book working for a nearby defense contractor. It was two very different worlds and while the defense world was stuck in their mainframes they could not comprehend what Xerox was doing (which enlightened folks did know about.) What this book does that I have not read elsewhere is capture that tension well.

[Jay Michlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got an advance review copy, and I could hardly put the book down as I read the last chapters. Following teams of gifted people working on a dramatic innovation in computing is compelling, even though, sadly, we know how the story ended. I never worked at Xerox, but certainly I crossed paths with the people, products and ideas there. The author’s rendering of young, naive engineers learning their way in a big company, and learning about life too, stirred memories. I worked at Bell Labs and had the same experiences there. And I left there for reasons not too unlike the reasons engineers left Xerox. And as an aside, the author’s description of the Sierra Club hiking experience of that time is absolutely perfect. And he also nicely points out the snobbishness of Silicon Valley types, especially toward southern California.

[Meg or Margy Crockett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read, of course I worked on the Xerox 8010 after it was a finished product, thus a few years after the period this book describes during its development. It certainly was still our future in the fall of 1982 when I first got my hands on this, my first computer. What a dream, I never knew I had! It was love at first sight! The Xerox Star was clearly where computers needed to go....and so fun in this book to get a fly on the wall look at how it all came to be. Early in 2021. I jumped at the chance to read an advanced copy of "Inventing the Future" which was only possible because ex-Xeroids from that period still keep in touch.

[Mike Laursen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are wondering what it was like to work at Xerox during the invention of the personal computer, this book conveys the experience. I like that Cory shows the doubt and struggle experienced while achieving something great.

I was still in high school during the events that take place in this book, but I was excitedly reading about the inventions being developed at PARC in hobbyist magazine, "Creative Computing". I didn't know then that ten years later I would end up working at the same two locations in the book, the Xerox computer development divisions in southern and northern California. I even played on the softball team in Palo Alto, just as described in the book. The culture, and a few of the people, were the same when I worked there, and are very accurately described.

I hear rumors that Cory may be working on a sequel set more in my period; I hope so. A lot of people don't know that Xerox spend over a decade trying to make a go commercially of the Xerox Star office systems, and I had the sometimes surreal experience of being fresh out of college and having a front row seat for the last days of that effort.

[Paul McJones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an advance review copy of Inventing the Future. I worked at Xerox SDD in Palo Alto from late 1976 to spring 1981. The book captures the spirit of a relatively small group within a large established company building a revolutionary new product. Seeing and using the Alto from Xerox PARC was to see and feel the future. We used the Alto to bootstrap a product combining the great Xerox PARC ideas: personal distributed computing, direct manipulation user interfaces, laser printing, local area networks and long-haul internets (before the Internet). As the book describes, these ideas needed faster hardware with a larger (and virtual) address space, and a unified user interface. To see what all those meetings and person-years of effort produced, you might want to take a look at the 1998 "Final demonstration of the original Xerox Star". Look carefully, and you'll see things still not widely available even in 2021.

[Bill Bewley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like some of the other reviewers, I worked on the Star program in El Segundo during the years covered by this book. I wasn’t a programmer, but I worked with most of them. I agree that the book captures the feel of the place. It brought back great memories: the A&E building, the Alto with the big disk you had to carry around, lunches at El Tarasco, trips to Palo Alto, the bean bag chairs, Zot’s, and many good friends. Not so great memories are the slowness of the Star software and the general feeling that Xerox didn’t know what to do with the product.

The book is well written, and despite a few technical bits of interest to software people, the general audience will find it a good read.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're very interested in the history of the project this story is based on, then you are absolutely going to love this book. If you're going into it curious, but not really knowing anything about it (like me), you might find this to be a bit of a slow read. I did enjoy reading the book, but it moved a little slowly for me, and a lot of the projects mentioned just went over my head, and didn't add much context for a lay reader. That said - I find it absolutely fascinating that Xerox - known for their printers, was so instrumental in advancing computer technology. An interesting story overall.