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Authors: Michael Hiltzik
Tags: Non-Fiction
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sequestered and privileged theoreticians from the thousands of ordinary engineers who faced relentless deadlines to get product out the door? Or perhaps he was merely being disingenuous when he wrote of a systems science laboratory that would "develop rapport with the entire company."
Goldman proposed an ambitious growth plan for the corporate lab. It would open with twenty-five to thirty researchers and a budget of less than $1 million, but equal Webster's size within about four years with a staff of 300 housed in a seven-million-dollar facility. The operating budget, he forecast, would plateau at about $6 million a year in 1969 dollars. (The figure turned out to be short by a factor of five.)
As for the new lab's location, he recommended New Haven, which offered Yale University's "intellectual night life" as a lure for prospective recruits as well as proximity to the new corporate seat in Stamford. "If the new research center is too isolated from Xerox environment and Xerox thinking, the chances of relevant coupling to Xerox's needs and practices will be severely diminished," he wrote prophetically. "On the other hand, a site near corporate headquarters has very much to offer in terms of coupling to the full range of future as well as present business interests of Xerox."
The liberal and enterprising Peter McColough was thoroughly enchanted by the notion of a corporate research hermitage. His enthusiasm, however, was not unanimously shared in the top reaches of the company. At the board meeting at which Goldman presented his plans for the new lab, strident opposition arose from an unexpected source: the new board members from SDS.
Max Palevsky balked violently at the idea of dissipating five or six million dollars a year on pie-in-the-sky research. He thought McColough and Goldman were approaching a serious financial commitment like dilettantes and that their motives were irrelevant to real corporate goals. "The memory I carried away was the number of times IBM came up in the discussions about the research center," he recalled later. "It was corporate conspicuous consumption. I never got the feeling that the people at Xerox understood that something like this didn't pay unless you really did basic research like IBM—treat it as a big undertaking that would need years to give you any return." If Xerox was serious about computer research, he groused, why not simply give the money to SDS? Then the computer division would be able to develop a new version of its Sigma series computer, which had been brought out to supplant the aging 930.
Goldman was disgusted. He replied that the best way to serve SDS interests was to mount an independent, far-reaching effort in basic research, not by financing incremental upgrades for an aging product. "They were the people who could best profit from the research lab, and they were completely disinterested," he said later.
In any event, McColough had the necessary authority to green-light the new lab on his own. He had brought Goldman into the meeting as a courtesy to the board, not as a bid for votes. As for the SDS faction, "Peter didn't pay too much attention to their objections, bless his soul," Goldman recalled. "But as a matter of record he did not require nor did he ask for board approval."
To Goldman he gave his blessing to establish Xerox's second full- scale research laboratory on a site to be determined, with the understanding that it was not to outshine in manpower or budget the proud Webster research park outside Rochester. Goldman shrugged at this solitary caveat. According to his master plan, the two labs would be pointed in entirely different directions. Still, there was no question with which one his heart lay. With seed money in his pocket, he set off to build Xerox a shrine to a new science.
CHAPTER 3
The House on Porter Drive
In May 1969, about the time Xerox shareholders voted to approve the purchase of SDS, the provost of Washington
Goldman proposed an ambitious growth plan for the corporate lab. It would open with twenty-five to thirty researchers and a budget of less than $1 million, but equal Webster's size within about four years with a staff of 300 housed in a seven-million-dollar facility. The operating budget, he forecast, would plateau at about $6 million a year in 1969 dollars. (The figure turned out to be short by a factor of five.)
As for the new lab's location, he recommended New Haven, which offered Yale University's "intellectual night life" as a lure for prospective recruits as well as proximity to the new corporate seat in Stamford. "If the new research center is too isolated from Xerox environment and Xerox thinking, the chances of relevant coupling to Xerox's needs and practices will be severely diminished," he wrote prophetically. "On the other hand, a site near corporate headquarters has very much to offer in terms of coupling to the full range of future as well as present business interests of Xerox."
The liberal and enterprising Peter McColough was thoroughly enchanted by the notion of a corporate research hermitage. His enthusiasm, however, was not unanimously shared in the top reaches of the company. At the board meeting at which Goldman presented his plans for the new lab, strident opposition arose from an unexpected source: the new board members from SDS.
Max Palevsky balked violently at the idea of dissipating five or six million dollars a year on pie-in-the-sky research. He thought McColough and Goldman were approaching a serious financial commitment like dilettantes and that their motives were irrelevant to real corporate goals. "The memory I carried away was the number of times IBM came up in the discussions about the research center," he recalled later. "It was corporate conspicuous consumption. I never got the feeling that the people at Xerox understood that something like this didn't pay unless you really did basic research like IBM—treat it as a big undertaking that would need years to give you any return." If Xerox was serious about computer research, he groused, why not simply give the money to SDS? Then the computer division would be able to develop a new version of its Sigma series computer, which had been brought out to supplant the aging 930.
Goldman was disgusted. He replied that the best way to serve SDS interests was to mount an independent, far-reaching effort in basic research, not by financing incremental upgrades for an aging product. "They were the people who could best profit from the research lab, and they were completely disinterested," he said later.
In any event, McColough had the necessary authority to green-light the new lab on his own. He had brought Goldman into the meeting as a courtesy to the board, not as a bid for votes. As for the SDS faction, "Peter didn't pay too much attention to their objections, bless his soul," Goldman recalled. "But as a matter of record he did not require nor did he ask for board approval."
To Goldman he gave his blessing to establish Xerox's second full- scale research laboratory on a site to be determined, with the understanding that it was not to outshine in manpower or budget the proud Webster research park outside Rochester. Goldman shrugged at this solitary caveat. According to his master plan, the two labs would be pointed in entirely different directions. Still, there was no question with which one his heart lay. With seed money in his pocket, he set off to build Xerox a shrine to a new science.
CHAPTER 3
The House on Porter Drive
In May 1969, about the time Xerox shareholders voted to approve the purchase of SDS, the provost of Washington
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