Dealers of Lightning

Why it’s on the list: The standard history of Xerox PARC — how a copier company assembled the group that produced the graphical interface, the laser printer, Ethernet and the personal workstation, and then failed to commercialise almost any of it.

Where I heard about it

• Replies to Sarah Guo — named in the answers to her question “is there a book / essay about environments that best support scientific discovery? Not about specifically bell labs, cavendish, xerox parc, los alamos - but why these places were so productive?” (March 2025). The whole recovered list is on Is There a Book… (tweet).

• Packy McCormick — on his “Some of my favorite books from 2024” thread (December 2024), archived at Some of my favorite books… (tweet).

• On Patrick Collison’s Bookshelf — Patrick Collison’s catalog of the physical books he owns, where he flags this one as substantially above average (light blue). Saved in Kyle’s April 19th, 2020 Roam daily note.

Connections

• Xerox PARC — the subject.
• Bell Labs · The Idea Factory — the other canonical lab, and the book most often read alongside this one.
• Robert Taylor — ran PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory; also the co-author of the Zen and the Art of Research Management rules saved in the same thread.
• Silicon Valley — what PARC’s diaspora built.