1. Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, June 12, 2005, http://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/. It was not inevitable that one successful generation of innovators would support its successors. In Hollywood, for example, Steven Spielberg, whose breakthrough film Jaws was released the year before Apple launched, recalled a very different attitude, though he used the same metaphor Jobs had. “It’s not like the older generation volunteered the baton,” he said. “The younger generation had to wrest it away from them. There was a great deal of prejudice if you were a kid and ambitious. . . . I got the sense that I represented this threat to everyone’s job.” Spielberg, quoted in Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (Simon & Schuster, 1998): 20.
2. Steve Jobs, interview by author, May 24, 2003.
3. See Zuckerberg’s comments on Jobs on Charlie Rose, Nov. 7, 2011. Zuckerberg has also said that he visited a temple in India on Jobs’s recommendation. See, e.g., http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-visited-india-thanks-to-steve-jobs-2015-9.
4. “OTL Financial Data, 1970–2016.” KK; Martin Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 115.
5. Gabriel Metcalf, “Beyond Boom and Bust: Where Is Silicon Valley Taking Us?,” The Urbanist, April 2016, Figure 3.
6. In 2015, the median home price in Palo Alto was $2.5 million. Xin Jiang, “A Perspective on Chinese Home Buyers,” Palo Alto Weekly, Oct. 27, 2016.
7. Lenny Siegel, Testimony Prepared for the Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Technology of the House Committee on Science and Technology and the Task Force on Education and Employment of the House Budget Committee, June 16, 1983, 1100–1, PSC.
8. Burt McMurtry, interview by author, Nov. 26, 2012.
9. This was the landmark Diamond v. Chakrabarty ruling of 1980.
10. As of February 10, 2017, the largest companies by market capitalization were Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon, and Facebook.
11. Mark Muro, Jonathan Rothwell, Scott Andes, Kenan Fikri, and Siddharth Kulkarni, “Executive Summary,” in America’s Advanced Industries: What They Are, Where They Are, and Why They Matter (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2015): 2.
12. Andrew Sullivan, “I Used to Be a Human Being,” New York, Sept. 18, 2016.
13. Radicati Group, Email Statistics Report, 2015–2019 (Executive Summary), http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf.
14. “Total domestic US revenues generated by biotech in 2012 reached at least $324 billion.” Robert Carlson, “Estimating the Biotech Sector’s Contribution to the US Economy,” Nature Biotechnology 34 (2016): 247–355.
15. Manufacturing employment as a share of the total US economy has undergone a steady decline in the past fifty years, dropping from 25 percent in 1960 to under 10 percent in 2010. Martin Neil Baily and Barry P. Bosworth, “US Manufacturing: Understanding Its Past and Its Potential Future,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 3–26, Fig. 1.
16. Center for Responsive Politics, https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=i&showYear=2016.
17. Jane E. Brody, “Hooked on Our Smartphones,” New York Times, Jan. 9, 2017.
18. Alan Kay, interview by Michael Schwarz, May 20, 2014. Thanks to Kay and Schwarz for allowing the author to sit in on the interview.
1. “Wherever We Look, Something’s Wrong,” Life, Feb. 23, 1968.
2. “Electronics Industry Failures Fall to Lowest Level Ever,” Electronic News, June 10, 1968.
3. Nilo Lindgren, “The Splintering of the Solid-State Electronics Industry,” Innovation 1, no. 8 (1969): 2–16.
4. Population figures are for the period 1950–1970.
5. Wallace Stegner, introduction to Yvonne Jacobson, Passing Farms, Enduring Values: California’s Santa Clara Valley (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, 1984).
6. For more on the birth and rise of the microchip industry in Silicon Valley, see Leslie Berlin, The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
7. “What Made a High Flier Take Off at Top Speed,” BusinessWeek, Oct. 30, 1965: 118–22; “Exchange Calls FC&I Pacer,” Electronic News, Feb. 7, 1966.
1. A great blow-by-blow account of this transmission is Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996): 152–4.
2. Leonard Kleinrock, “Memoirs of the Sixties,” in The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished Foundations of the Internet, ed. Peter Salus (Charlottesville, VA: Peer-to-Peer Communications, 2008): 96. See also “The First Internet Connection with UCLA’s Leonard Kleinrock” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuiBTJZfeo8, in which Kleinrock says the “Lo” marks “the day the infant Internet uttered its first word.”
3. M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (New York: Viking, 2001): 266. The IPTO budget rose from $15 million to $19.6 million during the years Taylor served as director; Arthur L. Norberg and Judy E. O’Neill, A History of the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Minneapolis, MN: Charles Babbage Institute, October 1992): 119.
4. Bob Taylor to Eugene G. Fubini, March 31, 1967, RWT.
5. This story is from Wessler’s comments at Taylor’s retirement party.
6. Waldrop, The Dream Machine: 265.
7. Taylor’s adviser was Lloyd A. Jeffress.
8. For a hilarious depiction of the waiting game that was batch processing, see the two-minute “Ellis D. Kropotchev Silent Film,” created by Arthur Eisenson and Gary Feldman, at http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/punched-cards/2/211/2253.
9. Bob Taylor, CHM interview.
10. J.C.R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, March 1960: 4–11.
11. Taylor, CHM interview.
12. Louise Licklider to Bob Taylor, January 1990, 4, RWT.
13. M. M. Davis [United Air Lines Sales Manager] to Bob Taylor, June 2, 1970, RWT.
14. Taylor, CBI interview.
15. John R. Rice and Saul Rosen, “History of the Department of Computer Sciences at Purdue University,” cs.perdue.edu/history/history.html.
16. In July 1966, Taylor wrote a letter in which he said that he had agreed to serve as director since none of the “several individuals we recommended for the job accepted.” Bob Taylor to Anthony G. Oetinger, July 29, 1966, RWT.
17. “San Antonio Boy, 5, Given Genius Rating,” San Antonio Express, Aug. 2, 1937.
18. “Supercommunity”: J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor, “The Computer as a Communication Device,” Science and Technology, April 1968: 21–31; “metacommunity”: Taylor, CBI interview.
19. Robert Taylor, “Plans for an Experimental, Interactive Computer Network,” paper to be presented at the 2nd Workshop on National Systems of the Task Group on National Systems for Scientific and Technical Information, Front Royal, VA, n.d., but probably 1968.
20. Banks and airline reservation systems also used a different type of remote computing.
21. Taylor, interview by John Markoff, Dec. 9, 2008, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqsTpNtziE8&list=PL653B57BD7DA5B890&index=1&feature=plpp_video.
22. Taylor, interview by author, April 22, 2013. Whether Licklider envisioned the Intergalactic Network as a centralized system (imagine a giant time-sharing system, with a single machine at the core and nodes taking the place of individual users) or a decentralized one (which is how the Arpanet worked and the Internet does now) is the subject of some debate. The historian Chigusa Kita believes that Licklider was envisioning a “centralized network to share resources, both informational and computational,” whereas Licklider’s biographer M. Mitchell Waldrop believes that Licklider likely envisioned a decentralized system similar to the Arpanet. A 1990 interview between Taylor and William Aspray contains the following exchange: TAYLOR: Recently, in fact I said [to Licklider], “Did you have a networking of the ARPANET sort in mind when you used that phrase [intergalactic network]?” He said, “No, I was thinking about a single timesharing system that was intergalactic. ASPRAY: Very large, like an octopus? TAYLOR: Right.
23. Robert Taylor, “Recollections and Reflections on the ARPANET,” unpublished, n.d., but appears to be mid-1970s, RWT. This document is the earliest I’ve found in which either Taylor or Herzfeld describes the conversation they had.
24. For an example of an ex post facto justification for the network, see Stephen Lukasik, quoted in Waldrop, Dream Machine, 279.
25. Noah Schachtman, “How Pacific Island Missile Tests Helped Launch the Internet,” Aug. 27, 2012, http://internethalloffame.org/blog/2012/08/27/how-pacific-island-missile-tests-helped-launch-internet.
26. Charles Herzfeld, quote from Robert Taylor, “Recollections and Reflections on the ARPANET.” Norberg and O’Neill also use the $500,000 figure. Since those were reapportioned funds, exactly how much was promised is unclear. Most accounts say $1 million, but they are all based on the same source: Taylor’s memory. The $500,000 figure seems more likely, particularly since the Program Plan written in 1968 calls for $560,000 for that fiscal year before jumping to $1 million in the following year.
27. Al Blue, CBI interview.
28. Stephen D. Crocker, “Foreword,” in ARPANET Sourcebook, ed. Peter Salus: 98.
29. Both Taylor and Roberts have used the term “blackmail” to describe Taylor’s hiring of Roberts. Taylor, CHM interview; Roberts, “The ARPANET and Computer Networks,” in A History of Personal Workstations, ed. Adele Goldberg (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1988), editor’s note, p. 145.
30. Roberts tells this story at http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/roberts.html.
31. In his CBI oral history, Roberts says he was hired as a special assistant to the director, with an understanding that he would go on to run the Information Processing Techniques Office. Taylor has said that Roberts was hired as a program manager, and it is under this title that Roberts is listed in the ARPANET Program Plan.
32. Roberts makes this point in his CBI interview and in Waldrop, The Dream Machine, 268–9.
33. Taylor, “Recollections and Reflections on the ARPANET.”
34. Blue, CBI interview.
35. Taylor, “Recollections and Reflections on the ARPANET.” Roberts’s take on the meeting is laid out in his CBI oral history and the generally excellent account in Waldrop, The Dream Machine, 272–4. Doug Engelbart, a participant, describes a similar lack of interest among principal investigators in John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin Books, 2005): 166. Taylor has said that neither IBM nor AT&T was interested in the network; indeed, that they were hostile to it.
36. Robert Kahn, CBI interview. Kahn was part of the network buildout from very early on and went on to direct the Information Processing Techniques Office from 1979 to 1985.
37. Wes Clark, CBI interview. Leonard Kleinrock, another key participant (and the man arguing for the significance of “ ‘Lo!’ As in lo and behold!”), says, “Bob set the tone for Larry’s modus operandum. Bob Taylor is a great administrator.” Kleinrock, CBI interview.
38. Those routers were called IMPs. Both Waldrop and Hafner/Lyon go into this ride at some length, though both say it was a taxi ride (unlikely, given the number of people in the vehicle: Blue, Clark, Dave Evans, Roberts, and Taylor). Both Roberts and Taylor say that Clark had mentioned the idea to him before mentioning it to anyone else, both thus implying that he had sought his approval before offering the idea to others.
39. Paul Baran to Bob Taylor, Oct. 16, 2004, RWT.
40. Licklider and Taylor, “The Computer as a Communication Device”: 21–31. See also Robert W. Taylor, “Man-Computer Input-Output Techniques,” IEEE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, March 1967.
41. Norberg and O’Neill, A History of the Information Processing Techniques Office. All information about the bidding process is classified, according to this document.
42. Taylor, CHM interview.
43. Taylor, CHM interview and interview by author, April 24, 2013.
44. The account in Hafner and Lyon’s Where Wizards Stay Up Late, though not footnoted, is consistent with Taylor’s version of events: “In the middle of December, Roberts entered into final negotiations with Raytheon for the IMP contract. Raytheon officials answered ARPA’s remaining technical questions and accepted the price. So it surprised everyone when, just a few days before Christmas, ARPA announced that the contract to build the Interface Message Processors that would reside at the core of its experimental network was being awarded to Bolt Bernanek and Newman, a small consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts” (81).
45. More on Taylor’s role in the birth of the graphics Center for Excellence at Utah is in Norberg and O’Neill, A History of the Information Processing Techniques Office: 281.
46. Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: 51. The NASA funding for Engelbart’s NLS oNLine Systems was about $80,000. Taylor also told Licklider about Engelbart’s work, which led to ARPA (where Licklider was then director) also funding the research.
47. Doug Engelbart, interview by Lowood, March 4, 1987, at http://stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/engelbart/engfmst1-ntb.html.
48. Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013. Markoff’s account corroborates Taylor’s description of his role.
49. Waldrop, The Dream Machine, 289.
50. Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013. In his CBI interview, Al Blue says, “Bob Taylor certainly was responsible for our continued support of Doug and his work out there.”
51. The 1968 demo in its entirety is at http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html.
52. “In those days, the concept was that nobody stayed in ARPA very long. You brought a guy in and got the best of his brains and then he moved on, and the next prodigy came along, if you will. So I never viewed the Taylor departure as being under any kind of duress.” Blue, CBI interview.
53. Taylor’s ID identifying him as a general was issued on January 20, 1967.
54. Taylor, CHM interview. It seems likely that one person who joined Taylor on these trips was Colonel Clair L. Shirley, USAF, who worked in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and whom Taylor listed as a reference in a job application.
55. Barry Wessler, interview by author, March 28, 2013. Wessler accompanied Taylor on later trips.
56. Blue, CBI interview.
57. Ibid.
58. ARPANET program plan.
59. Wayne Morse to Harold Howe, Commissioner of Education [re: Taylor], July 18, 1968, RWT. Morse, who set a filibuster record in the Senate, possessed a kindred spirit to Taylor’s, according to an official Senate biography: “His admirers called him ‘The Tiger of the Senate.’ His many enemies, including five presidents, called him a lot worse. Today he is remembered as a gifted lawmaker and principled maverick who thrived on controversy.” http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Wayne_Morse_Sets_Filibuster_Record.htm.
60. Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013 and April 22, 2013;
1. The Berkeley Barb article (“Hear Ye, Hear Ye,” by “Robin Hood’s Park Commissioner”) is quoted in its entirety in The “People’s Park”: A Report on a Confrontation at Berkeley, California, Submitted to Governor Ronald Reagan (Office of the Governor, State of California, July 1, 1969): 2–3.
2. Reagan, quoted in “You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966–1970” exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
3. The “People’s Park”: 5, 16.
4. Eldridge Cleaver, in Marcia Eymann and Charles M. Wollenberg, What’s Going On?: California and the Vietnam Era (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2004): 53.
5. Al Alcorn describes Rackarock as a potent combination of ammonium nitrate and nitrobenzene similar to the explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 25, 2011.
6. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 25, 2011.
7. Alcorn’s size: résumé in tabbed business plan, tabbed business plan, Atari Business Plans Collection, SUSC.
8. Statistics for and accounts of People’s Park have been checked across a number of sources. When in doubt, I relied on Seth Rosenfeld, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012). Rosenfeld’s definitive account corroborates Alcorn’s description of his experiences on May 15.
9. “Nation: Occupied Berkeley,” Time, May 30, 1969.
10. Ibid. It says 482 marchers were arrested in a single day. Frederick Berry, Thomas Brooks, and Eugene Commons, “Terror in a Teapot,” The Nation, June 23, 1969, claims that “between May 15 and May 24, almost 1,000 arrests were made on the streets of Berkeley.”
11. The image appears in Alan Copeland, People’s Park (New York: Phoenix/Ballantine, 1969). Alcorn would end up working with the ACLU’s investigation into the People’s Park violence, and he would testify before the Alameda County Grand Jury.
12. “Starting before World War I, the United States and German governments began conducting climate surveys and gathering meteorological data. Their findings revealed Redwood City to be at the center of one of the world’s three best climates.” http://redwoodcityhistoryroom.com/redwood-city-history.html.
13. For Ampex’s role in the Apollo 8 transmissions, see http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/ApolloTV-Acrobat5.pdf and http://blog.longnow.org/02009/05/03/digital-recovery-of-moon-images/.
14. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 25, 2011.
15. Guild analogy suggested in Steve Mayer, interview by author, Feb. 3, 2012.
16. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 25, 2011.
17. “Videofile Training Manual: Introductory Concepts,” Ampex Corp. Records M1230, Series 2, Box 3, accn 2001-241, SUSC. General sources for Ampex: interviews with Alcorn, Bristow, Bushnell, Mayer, and Kurt Wallace, as well as the Ampex collection, M1230, SUSC.
18. Leonard Herman, “The Untold Atari Story,” Edge, April 2009; Martin Goldberg and Curt Vendel, Atari Inc.—Business Is Fun (Carmel, NY: Syzygy Press, 2012).
19. Nolan Bushnell, interview by Steve L. Kent. Steve L. Kent collection relating to the video game industry, M1872, SUSC.
20. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
21. Alcorn, CHM interview.
22. Bushnell at “Atari’s Impact on Silicon Valley, 1972–1984,” panel organized by the IEEE SV Tech History Committee, Sept. 8, 2016, Santa Clara, California.
1. Vineta Alvarez Eubank, interview by author, Feb. 14, 2017.
2. Cal. Labor Code § 1350 (1955). The section limiting women to eight-hour workdays was repealed in 1984.
3. Eubank, interview by author, Feb. 14, 2017.
4. Fawn Alvarez Talbott, interview by author, July 24, 2013.
5. Katherine Maxfield, Starting Up Silicon Valley: How ROLM Became a Cultural Icon and Fortune 500 Company (Austin, TX: Emerald Book Company, 2014): 28.
1. Mike Markkula, CHM interview.
2. Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 2, 2015.
3. Gene Carter, interview by author, Jan. 7, 2016.
4. Carter, CHM interview; Carter, interview by author, Jan. 7, 2016.
5. “slugged a coworker”: Jack Gifford, SUSG interview.
6. Carter, CHM interview; Mike Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 2, 2015.
7. Charles E. Sporck, Spinoff: A Personal History of the Industry That Changed the World (2001): 219, 222.
8. Gifford, SUSG interview.
9. Markkula, CHM interview; Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 2, 2015.
10. Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 4, 2015.
11. Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 2, 2015; this interview is also the source of the footnoted story.
12. Markkula, CHM interview; Gifford, SUSG interview; Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
13. Markkula, SUSG interview.
14. Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 4, 2015.
15. Ibid.
16. In 1971, Intel amended its stock option plan, which had originally included 175,000 shares, to add another 100,000 shares (Intel S-1).
1. Ron Goben, “Police Break Up Palo Alto Jam-in by Stanford Mob,” Palo Alto Times, May 16, 1969.
2. Stanford University News Service Chronology of Events, May 16, 1969, and “What Is Happening Here?” [flyer distributed May 18 but using the same language] at http://a3m2009.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_may16_sri/files_68-69_may_16/A3M-5-16_What_is_Happening.pdf.
3. Stanford University News Service Chronology of Events, May 16, 1969, at http://a3m2009.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_may16_sri/files_68-69_may_16/A3M-5-16_Chronology_p1-2.pdf; Notes from Bill and Margie at http://a3m2009.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_may16_sri/files_68-69_may_16/A3M-5-16_Notes_2.pdf.
4. “What to Do If You Are Arrested,” http://a3m2009.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_may16_sri/files_68-69_may_16/A3M-5-16_If_Arrested.pdf.
5. Goben, “Police Break Up Palo Alto Jam-in by Stanford Mob.”
6. Marc and Carrie Sapir, “Stanford, May 1969: Students Shut Counterinsurgency Center,” Peninsula Observer, through May 16, 1969: 1, 3. “Cease all classified” (in footnote): “Guidelines for Research at Stanford and SRI,” Documents of the April 3rd Movement, SC 841, 1:1, SUSC.
7. The cache of documents at the April Third Movement’s online archive is invaluable: http://a3m2009.org/archive/1968-1969/68-69_may16_sri/68-69_may16_sri.html.
8. Ron Goben, “Stanford Boycott Hits Humanities Classes,” Palo Alto Times, May 12, 1969; Jenny Matthews, “Movement Awaits Trustees’ Action,” Stanford Daily, May 13, 1969; Marc and Carrie Sapir, “Stanford, May 1969: Students Shut Counterinsurgency Center,” Peninsula Observer, through May 16, 1969: 1, 3.
9. “In general, Stanford students practiced a more voyeuristic form of activism than their Berkeley counterparts,” writes Eric Vettel in Biotech: The Countercultural Origins of an Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2006): 116.
10. On interdisciplinary centers: Cyrus C. M. Mody and Andrew J. Nelson, “ ‘A Towering Virtue of Necessity’: Interdisciplinarity and the Rise of Computer Music at Vietnam-Era Stanford,” Osiris, Volume 28, Number 1, Jan. 1, 2013. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/671380. The Air Force ROTC program at Stanford was terminated in June 1971; the Army and Navy ROTC programs concluded in June 1973. “Towards an On-Campus ROTC Program at Stanford University: A Report and Recommendation by the Ad Hoc Committee [to the Faculty Senate],” Stanford University, April 2011.
11. Niels Reimers, interview by author, Oct. 27, 2014; “Encina Hall: Leland Stanford’s Grand Hotel,” Sandstone & Tile, Winter 2000.
12. The inventor was William S. Johnson; the name of the patent application filed for the invention was “Synthesis of Juvenile Hormones.” Niels Reimers to William S. Johnson, “Royalty Income Distribution,” May 21, 1969, SUOTL.
13. Agreement between the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford, Jr. University and Research Corporation, Jan. 1, 1956, SUOTL. The contract notes that for Research Corporation, “no part of the net earnings . . . inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or university.” The inventor received $100 and 16.66 percent of the gross dollars received by Research Corporation; Stanford received 50 percent of the net. Today Research Corporation exists, in a different form, as Research Corporation for Science Advancement; see http://www.rescorp.org/about-rcsa/history. For an excellent history of Research Corporation, see David C. Mowery and Bhaven N. Sampat, “Patenting and Licensing University Inventions: Lessons from the History of the Research Corporation,” Industrial and Corporate Change, June 1, 2001.
14. “Data for Patent Licensing Program Regarding Research Corporation,” n.d., but must be 1968, SUOTL.
15. Niels Reimers, “Subj: Individuals performing patent admin. functions at Stanford (per conversation with KB),” June 27, 1968.
16. Yaell Ksander, “The Invention of Fluoride Toothpaste,” http://indianapublicmedia.org/momentofindianahistory/the-invention-of-flouride-toothpaste/.
17. Darrell Rovell, “Royalties for Gatorade Trust Surpass $1 Billion,” http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/13789009/royalties-gatorade-inventors-surpass-1-billion.
18. Karen W. Arneson, “Frank Newman, 77, Dies; Shaped Education,” New York Times, June 4, 2004; “In Memoriam: Frank Newman,” http://www.uri.edu/library/special_collections/exhibits/newman/newman_memoriam.htm.
19. Sally Hines, interview by author, Nov. 11, 2014.
20. Niels Reimers, “Commercialization of Ideas in a Research Environment,” Oct. 13, 1988, SUOTL.
21. Niels Reimers to File, Oct. 29, 1968, SUOTL; Reimers to File, Patent Licensing Program Notes, Nov. 14, 1968, SUOTL.
22. “Invention, Events, and Licensing at Stanford,” February 1972, SUOTL.
23. Samuel Baron, University of Texas, quoted in Hal Lancaster, “Profits in Gene Splicing Bring the Tangled Issue of Ownership to Fore,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 3, 1980.
24. Stanford University Founding Grant, Nov. 11, 1885.
25. Frank Newman to Kenneth M. Cuthbertson, vice president for finance, July 19, 1968. In this letter, Newman promised that “we can operate on a low-risk yet effective basis,” and after explaining that there would be “no added or special staff,” proposed that $15,000 be set aside for outside attorneys’ fees for the pilot program. “The upside chance for gain may be considerable,” he notes. He also mentioned “the ⅓ to the university, ⅓ to the department, and ⅓ to the inventor arrangement.”
1. Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (New York: Penguin Books, 2012): 75–8; Sandra Kurtzig, CEO: Building a Four Hundred Million Dollar Company from the Ground Up (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991).
2. William D. Smith, “Computer Time Sharing Grows Up,” New York Times, Feb. 17, 1969.
3. Ibid.
4. Warner Sinback, CHM interview.
5. Kurtzig, CEO: 25. A great account of early women programmers—those working a full generation before Kurtzig—is Jennifer S. Light, “When Computers Were Women,” Technology and Culture 40, no. 3 (1999): 455–83.
6. The gender breakdown of students is from the program from Stanford’s 77th commencement (1968, when Kurtzig graduated). The number and gender of people in the aeronautics and astronautics department is hard to verify, since the department does not have records going back that far. Kurtzig says she was one of two women in a department of 250; the commencement program shows that in 1968, Kurtzig (then Sandra Brody) was the only woman in a group of forty-three students receiving master’s degrees in aeronautics/astronautics. Nine doctorates were also awarded in the department that year, all to men. The program is also the source of the statement that her family lived in Beverly Hills.
7. Sandra Kurtzig, interview by author, June 18, 2015.
8. Sinback, CHM interview. Sinback initiated the recruiting program after a friend whose daughter was a math major said that she was having a problem finding a job and Sinback realized that educated women “were potentially great sources of talent.”
9. Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
10. Kurtzig, CEO: 33.
11. Ibid.
12. Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
13. Kurtzig, CEO: 124.
14. Ibid.: 248.
1. Don C. Hoefler, “Silicon Valley USA,” Electronic News, Jan. 10, 1971. As late as December 1979, even local papers referred to “the Santa Clara Valley electronics industry; Charles Petit, “Wizard of Silicon Gulch,” Peninsula Times Tribune, Sept. 21, 1977; Bill Densmore, “The Santa Clara Valley Electronics Industry Comes of Age During the ‘Me’ Generation Decade,” Peninsula Times Tribune, Dec. 28, 1979, “The Splintering of the Solid-State Electronics Industry,” Innovation 8, 1969.
2. The first serious article about the regional economy on the San Francisco Peninsula was Gene Bylinsky, “California’s Great Breeding Ground for Industry,” Fortune, June 1974: 129–224. The name “Silicon Valley” first appeared in the New York Times in John H. Allan, “Whither Semiconductor Stocks?,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 1975.
3. Art Detman (Forbes editor) to Regis McKenna, Nov. 8, 1971, RM. McKenna included Detman on a list of editors to receive releases about Silicon Valley startups; Detman wrote to ask to be removed from the list, explaining that he was interested in hearing only about large, publicly held firms.
4. Matt Bowling, “The Massage Parlor Crackdown: Palo Alto’s Prostitution Problem,” Palo Alto Daily News, May 11, 2008.
5. HP-35 manual at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~sedwards/hp35colr.pdf; “HP-35 Scientific Calculator Awarded IEEE Milestone,” HP news release, April 14, 2009, at http://www.ieee.org/documents/hp35_milestone_release.pdf.
1. Wanted flyer, SK.
2. Sandra Kurtzig, CEO: Building a Four Hundred Million Dollar Company from the Ground Up (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991): 17–18. The entrepreneur was Larry Whitaker; the company he launched was Halcyon Communications.
3. Auerbach Guide to Time Sharing, January 1973.
4. “Women in Science and Technology: A Report on an MIT Workshop,” May 21–23, 1973. Seventy percent of women worked in teaching, sales, or clerical jobs. A later study (Francine D. Blau, “Trends in the Well-Being of American Women,” Journal of Economic Literature, March 1998: 112–65) estimated that about 45 percent of women comparable to Kurtzig in age, educational level, race, and marriage status (with a working spouse at home) were in the workforce.
5. “Women in the Workforce,” 2009 Census presentation at https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pdf/women_workforce_slides.pdf. Ninety-eight percent of women-owned businesses in 1972 were sole proprietorships. Discussion and Comments on the Major Issues Facing Small Business: A Report of the Select Committee on Small Business, United States Senate to the Delegates of the White House Conference on Small Business, Dec. 4, 1979: 55.
6. U.S. Department of Labor, “National Survey of Professional, Administrative, Technical, and Clerical Pay,” March 1972.
7. “Worldwide IT Spending on Enterprise Software,” https://www.statista.com/topics/1823/business-software/.
8. 52.1 percent of venture capital investments in 2015 went to software; “Venture Capital by Industry,” Silicon Valley Indicators 2016, http://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/economy/innovation-entrepreneurship/venture-capital-by-industry/.
9. Martin Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 4, 6; Jon Levine, “5,000 Entrepreneurs . . . and Counting,” Venture, January 1982.
10. Martha Reiner, “Top Computer Firm Began as Part-Time Work,” SF Business Journal, March 2, 1981.
11. Marty Browne, ASK’s first employee, estimates that more than 90 percent of ASK’s customers in its first decade had never used a computer. “Hewlett Packard Software Workshop—Session 2: Starting HP Software Businesses,” session recorded June 5, 2008, Computer History Museum.
12. Kurtzig, CEO: 45.
13. “Manufacturing Management,” Tymshare NewsBits, July 1974; “Manman Adapted to On-line Usage on Tymshare Net,” Computerworld, Sept. 25, 1974.
14. Kurtzig, CEO: 18.
15. Check from Halcyon Communications to ASK, Feb. 25, 1972, SK.
16. Thread at http://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2006/10/19/the-things-i-remember-about-palo-alto-while-growing-up.
17. “Women in Electronics,” Peninsula Electronic News, Aug. 27, 1973.
18. Sandra Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
19. Marion M. Woods, “What Does It Take for a Woman to Make It in Management?,” Personnel Journal, January 1975.
20. Ann Hardy, interview by Janet Abbate, 2002, at http://ethw.org/Oral-History:Ann_Hardy#Interview.
21. Robert Kaestner, Darren Lubotsky, and Javaeria Qureshi, “Mother’s Employment by Child Age and Its Implications for Theory and Policy,” Sept. 2, 2015, at http://www.sole-jole.org/16113.pdf; “Employment Characteristics of Families Summary,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 22, 2016.
22. Kurtzig, CEO, 55.
23. Shockley papers, SC0222, ARCH-1986-050, Box 2, SUSC.
24. Michael S. Malone, “How Is Kurtzig Doing? You Only Have to ASK,” San Jose Mercury News, March 6, 1979; Kurtzig, CEO: 55.
25. “Women in Electronics.” 1973.
26. Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
27. Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: 131. A former Tymshare salesman recalls that the company required contracts with “unusual terms” that charged for CPU seconds, connect time, and storage units; http://corphist.computerhistory.org/corphist/view.php?s=stories&id=136
28. Tymshare Annual Report, 1973.
29. Quist made a private investment in Tymshare and served on the board after helping the company secure an SBIC loan in 1965. Moreover, at nearly the same time that Kurtzig decided to license Tymshare to distribute her program, Tymshare had recently gone back to the SDS 940 (then renamed the XDS 940 after the acquisition by Xerox) after an unsatisfactory effort to use the Sigma 7. The Sigma 7 was the computer that Taylor’s group at PARC had refused to work with; Becky McNown, “History of Tymshare.”
30. Larry Sonsini, ROHO interview.
31. “Law, Innovation, and Silicon Valley,” Stanford Lawyer 86 (June 11, 2012); “Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati: About Us,” https://www.wsgr.com/WSGR/Display.aspx?SectionName=about.
32. The exchange with the manager on MAMA is from Kurtzig, CEO: 62. Marty Browne, ASK’s first programmer, says that “Tymshare required that there be a six-letter reference to a program” and that therefore MAMA was too short (Browne oral history, CHM). Several Tymshare annual reports list programs with names that are not six letters long, but it is possible that six letters were mandatory at the time Kurtzig was choosing a name. It is likewise possible that both stories are true: that Kurtzig had the conversation with the manager and that six letters were a Tymshare requirement.
33. Jim A. Thorp, “The Entrepreneur,” The Executive SF, July 1981.
34. ASK Computer Systems, Inc., Stanford University Graduate School of Business Case S-E-16 (11/1994), Exhibit 3.
35. HP Annual Report, 1975.
36. Kurtzig, CEO: 69.
37. “Processor Description: Hewlett-Packard 2100” at http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/HP/HP.2100.1972.102646165.pdf.
38. Kurtzig met Browne at Farinon, the same company whose owner’s challenge would change Bill Hambrecht’s thinking about small companies going public. Farinon had hired ASK to computerize its book, hundreds of pages long and nicknamed “the bible,” that described how to build all the components and subcomponents of the company’s antennas, amplifiers, transmitters, oscillators, and receivers used around the world to carry telephone calls over long distances. The early 1970s were a tough time to find a job in Silicon Valley, even for a Stanford math major, so Browne had signed up with a temp agency that had placed him in a $2.75-an-hour job at Farinon, where he did much of the grunt work (and later more sophisticated work, as well) in connection with Kurtzig’s program. She was impressed enough with him to offer a job at ASK when the Farinon project ended. Marty Browne, interview by author, July 12, 2015.
39. Liz Seckler, interview by author, July 29, 2015.
40. Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
41. HP, 1975 Annual Report; Jim Leeke, “Career Women Chip Away at the Male Stranglehold at the Top in Silicon Valley,” Electronic Times, Sept. 25, 1980.
42. Kurtzig, CEO: 73–80.
43. Ibid.: 72.
1. Dee F. Andersen (university controller) to Bob Taylor, Dec. 23, 1969; T. C. King to Taylor, March 3, 1970, both RWT. Taylor, “Some Thoughts on Information Processing at the University of Utah,” March 10, 1970, RWT.
2. The PARC labs on Porter Drive, and later Coyote Hill, were a mile from the Stanford campus.
3. Stewart Brand, “Spacewar!: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums,” Rolling Stone, Dec. 7, 1972.
4. Taylor told the author that if he were ever the subject of a biography, he wanted the Leibovitz photo for the cover.
5. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine (New York: Basic Books, 1996): 130, 229.
6. Computer History Museum Revolution exhibit.
7. Ibid.
8. Chief Scientist Jack Goldman, in Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: 154. The MIT president was Jerome Wiesner.
9. Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013. The first seminar Taylor gave at PARC was called “A Brief History of ARPA-Sponsored Computer Research” (Activity Report for CSL, July 2, 1971, XPA).
10. J. E. Goldman to C. P. McColough, June 23, 1969. In addition to the $5.8 million operating budget, Goldman anticipated a $7 million maximum investment.
11. J. E. Goldman to C. P. McColough, June 23, 1969.
12. George Pake, “Research and Development Management and the Establishment of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,” Remarks for the IEEE Convocation “The Second Century Begins,” January 1985, XPA.
13. Pake’s role in increased salaries: Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: Harper-Collins, 2000): 61; Taylor’s role: performance reviews, RWT.
14. Taylor’s title: Performance Appraisal Notice, March 1, 1971, RWT.
15. In May 1971, Taylor talked about “Xerox’s ‘Information Company’ intent,” and he described the emphases for both CSL and SSL as “prototype systems experiments, especially with regard to library systems, office systems, medical systems, and educational systems.” At some point in 1972, he began to write about “the PARC prototype office communication system.” By May 1975, the “primary mission of the Palo Alto Research Center is to lay the research foundations for Xerox information systems and thus for Xerox business success in the future automated office,” according to the “PARC Mission and Relation to Business Goals: Narrative for Long Range Plan, May 1975,” XPA. Taylor, performance review, 8/30/70–1/31/71 (completed by Taylor 5/28/71), and performance review for period 9/1/71–9/1/72, RWT.
16. Bob Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013.
17. Severo Ornstein, interview by author, Jan. 9, 2014.
18. Taylor’s criteria for a good researcher: recognition by peers and superiors; an excellent education, preferably from a top school (he put a great deal of emphasis on that); “singularity of purpose”; and an ability to “communicate about work on the leading edge,” even if it meant inventing the vocabulary to describe that work. Taylor, interview by author, Dec. 18, 2013.
19. Bob Metcalfe, interview by author, May 22, 2014. Metcalfe, the coinventor of Ethernet, went on: “Bob was more [about] culture and touchy-feely and charismatic. Jerry was the more technical- and administration-oriented.”
20. Paul A. Strassmann, The Computers Nobody Wanted: My Years with Xerox (New Canaan, CT: Information Economics Press, 2008): 113. On Larry Tesler (in footnote): Elkind to Pake, “Some Conclusions and Comments on the Tesler Affair” and “Chronology of Our Negotiations with Larry Tesler,” both Oct. 1, 1971, RWT.
21. Butler Lampson, interview by Alan Kay, CHM. The research project was Project Genie. For more on Berkeley Computer Company, see “Preliminary Proposal for a Systems Group within the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,” RWT.
22. Taylor, interview by author, April 22, 2013.
23. Taylor, interviews by author, March 18 and April 24, 2013. John Markoff cited several sources who said that Engelbart could not “let go of his creation so the world could use it.” An effort to license Engelbart’s system to PARC was “stillborn,” according to Markoff. John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin Books, 2005): 204.
24. Doug Engelbart, Smithsonian oral history, at http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/englebar.htm.
25. Robert Taylor, Forum 79 talk, RWT.
26. Lampson, CHM interview.
27. Metcalfe, interview by author, May 22, 2104.
28. Dealer minutes, Feb. 29, 1972, RWT; Alan Kay, interview by author, May 20, 2014.
29. Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013.
30. “These two papers mark the beginning of a controversy which is not going to be settled by any single experiment, but the controversy is healthy and should not be inhibited.” Robert W. Taylor, “Man-Computer Input-Output Techniques,” IEEE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, March 1967: 4.
31. Bob Sproull to George Pake, Sept. 28, 1977, RWT.
32. Dealer minutes, Jan. 19, 1972.
33. Dealer minutes, Jan. 9, 1974.
34. Alan Kay recounts this story in his interview with Lampson, CHM.
35. Dealer minutes, Feb. 23, 1972, RWT.
36. Dealer minutes, Jan. 26, 1972, RWT.
37. Severo Ornstein, interview by author, Jan. 9, 2014.
38. Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker, CHM panel, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H2BPrgxedY.
39. The price of a PDP-10 system is an estimated cost by the CSL personnel over a five-year lifetime. A Sigma 9 system, they claimed, would cost $5.65 million and a “PARC-built system,” $913,000. “MAXC Capital Acquisition Request,” June 24, 1971, XPA.
40. A notable exception was chief scientist Jack Goldman, the man behind PARC, who objected to the SDS purchase in the first place.
41. Strassmann, The Computers Nobody Wanted: 113.
42. Dealer minutes, March 14, 1972.
43. Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999): 134–5. See also Howard Frank, Babbage Oral History: 20–1. “ARPA was trying to give away the ARPANET at one time, to get anybody to take it,” recalled Frank, who, along with Taylor’s successor Larry Roberts, met with AT&T in an effort to convince it to run the network. Frank describes AT&T’s reaction to the offer to take ARPANET technology to the public as “complete lack of interest, because they couldn’t imagine why anybody would want to send data in the network.” AT&T also did not believe packet switching had a future.
44. Notation in Jerry Elkind and Bob Taylor to George Pake, “Activity Report for June 13, 1972, through December 31, 1972,” records that on May 22, 1972, Elkind wrote a memo to Jack Goldman (“Xerox Acquisition of the ARPA Network”) “discussing the future sale of the ARPANET and the possible implications to and for Xerox,” RWT. On June 9, Elkind again wrote to Goldman (“ARPA Network”) “suggesting that a group be formed to analyze the opportunity for buying the ARPANET, and recommending the action Xerox should take.” In a June 16, 2014, email to the author, Elkind said he had entirely forgotten about the exchange and so could not provide further comment.
45. Email from Janet Abbate to author, June 18, 2014.
46. Dealer minutes, Feb. 23, 1972. Kay says that PARC’s creep toward a personal computer began even earlier. He points to the Pendery Papers compiled by the lab in the spring of 1971 in response to a request from Donald W. Pendery, Xerox’s director of product planning. Papers by Jim Mitchell, Alan Kay, and Richard Shoup, among others, make it clear that the lab was already moving toward distributed computing. “Pendery Papers” file, XPA.
47. Dealer minutes, Feb. 29, 1972.
48. Lampson, interview by author, April 18, 2014; Chuck Thacker, interview by author, April 11, 2014.
49. Thacker sent his own memo on a similar theme at the same time. On the network: “We can very easily put in an Aloha-like point-to-point packet network between Alto’s, using a coax as the ether (or microwave with a repeater on a hill for home terminals)”; Butler Lampson to CSL, Dec. 19, 1972, RWT.
50. Butler Lampson to CSL, Dec. 19, 1972, RWT.
51. Larry Tesler, Designing Interactions interview: http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/LarryTesler.
52. Thacker, interview by author, April 11, 2014.
53. The CSL Archives Notes are filled with these sorts of communications. “Vented Frustrations” is a memo from Metcalfe dated Oct. 16, 1972; “What Am I Doing Here” is from Peter Deutsch, Feb. 12, 1971, RWT.
54. Tesler, interview by author, May 16, 2014.
55. Bob Sproull to George Pake, Sept. 28, 1977, RWT.
56. Taylor, interview by author, July 18, 2013.
1. Al Alcorn title from résumé in tabbed business plan.
2. The address of Nutting Associates: 500 Logue Avenue.
3. Nolan Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
4. Bill Pitts, interview by author, March 21, 2012.
5. Al Alcorn, CHM interview. Alcorn’s explanation: “It involved simply making a sync generator, a television sync generator which had, you know, counters to count clock pulses to make a horizontal sync, and then counters to count horizontal sync to make vertical sync, and so you’d get the lines set up. If you had another sync generator and you just had it running at the same time, but not synchronous with it, just the same clock and you decided to take the second sync generator output and make a spot where horizontal and vertical sync happen the same time, that spot would appear randomly, somewhere on that screen, just by happenstance. You turn the power up, backup would be somewhere else. So now if you had that sitting there and you made the second sync generator a vertical counter, one less than the primary sync generator, that spot would appear to move up, you know, and if you made the count one more than the count, you’d appear to go down and similarly horizontal. So now, you’ve basically— you’re less than 20, 50-cents chips, and you now have a spot, you can put a spot anywhere.” For more technical details on Computer Space, see Henry Lowood, “Video Games in Computer Space: The Complex History of Pong,” IEEE Annals in the History of Computing 31 (July–September 2009): 5–19.
6. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 25, 2012. Bushnell patented the “trick.” “Video Image Positioning Control System for Amusement Device,” patent 3,793,483, filed by Bushnell Nov. 24, 1972, granted Feb. 19, 1974. The image positioning technique “eventually became a staple of game machines and home computers in the form of sprites,” according to the video game historian Henry Lowood.
7. “Syzygy Statement of Owner’s Equity, Year Ended December 31, 1971,” in Martin Goldberg and Curt Vendel, Atari Inc.—Business Is Fun (Carmel, NY: Syzygy Press, 2012): 53.
8. http://retro.ign.com/articles/858/858351p1.html.
9. Alcorn, CHM interview.
10. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
11. Ibid.
12. Alcorn says that he “took half a chip” and “gated out” the tones. http://retro.ign.com/articles/858/858351p1.html.
13. “Atari’s Impact on Silicon Valley, 1972–1984,” panel organized by the IEEE SV Tech History Committee, Sept. 8, 2016, Santa Clara, California.
14. Joe Decuir, interview by author, Jan. 10, 2011.
15. Alcorn, CHM interview.
16. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 25, 2011.
17. Alcorn, CHM interview; Alcorn, interview by author, Jan. 9, 2012.
18. Al Alcorn, speaking at “Atari’s Impact on Silicon Valley” panel, Sept. 8, 2016.
19. Nolan Bushnell, quoted in Steven L. Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond . . . The Story Behind the Craze that Touched Our Lives and Changed the World (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2010).
20. Alcorn tells this story at http://www.acmi.net.au/talks_gameon_storyofpong.htm. Goldberg and Vendel think it is possible that the players really did know someone who was working on a rival machine.
21. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
22. Alcorn, quoted in Kent, Ultimate History, 44.
23. Bushnell, interview by Steve Kent, SUSC.
24. Bushnell, SV.
25. In addition to the 3 percent, Atari would receive $4,000 per month. William K. Ford, “Copy Game for High Score: The First Video Game Lawsuit,” Journal of Intellectual Property Law 20 (2012): fn. 51.
26. Al Alcorn, at http://retro.ign.com/articles/858/858351p1.html.
27. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 25, 2011.
28. Atari Business Plan, 1975, Atari Inc. Business Plans Collection, M1641, SSC.
29. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
30. Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games, confirmed by Steve Bristow, interview by author, Nov. 9, 2011.
31. Kurt Wallace, interview by author, April 18, 2012.
32. Eddie Adlum, quoted in Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games.
33. “Atari: Beginning to End,” panel with Al Alcorn, Steve Mayer, Bill Reebok, and John Skruch, CGE 2k4 keynote (2004), at http://www.digitpress.com/cge/2k4_mp3/2k4_mp3.htm.
34. It would be years before the trade press that followed jukeboxes and pinball machines would begin to cover video games.
35. At high interest rates, and using essentially all the company’s assets as security, Atari secured some $2.25 million in loans from General Electric Credit Corporation and Bank of America. Atari, Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, June 2, 1973, and June 1, 1974.
36. Alcorn, interview by author, Jan. 12, 2011.
37. Promotional materials for Pong advertised the game’s “Low Key Cabinet, Suitable for All Sophisticated Locations.” Raiford Guins, “Beyond the Bezel: Coin-op Arcade Video Game Cabinets as Design History,” Journal of Design History, Oct. 7, 2015: 7.
38. “The Duke” brochure, SB; The Gospel According to St. Pong. http://www.digitpress.com/library/newsletters/stpong/st_pong_v1n6.pdf.
39. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
40. Ibid.
41. Atari agreed to buy Dabney’s ownership share for $246,418, paid in ten equal installments beginning one year later, in March 1974. To support himself before the payments kicked in, Dabney bought the pinball route that Atari owned. Because Dabney, like the company itself, had little cash, he paid for the route with a $100,000 IOU. Details from Atari S-1 mockup, Al Alcorn, papers relating to the history of video games, 1973–1974, M1758, SUSC.
42. Bushnell, interview by Peter Sellers, Aug. 8, 2003, cited in John Sellers, Arcade Fever: The Fan’s Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2001).
43. Bushnell, SV.
44. The Gospel According to St. Pong, Aug. 8, 1973.
45. Bushnell, SV; Stanley T. Kaufman (Actuarial Systems, Inc.) to Atari, Inc., March 29, 1974, courtesy Greg Kovacs.
46. Atari Business Plan, 1974, Section IV, Atari, Inc., Business Plans, 1974–1975, M1641, SUSC.
47. Atari’s 1973 list of competitors selling “computer video games” numbered a dozen: Allied Leisure, Midway (a Bally subsidiary), Ramtek, Williams (a Seeburg subsidiary), For-Play, Chicago Coin (a division of Chicago Dynamics), Amutronics, Alca, Sega Enterprises (a Gulf+Western subsidiary), Taito, Nutting Associates, and U.S. Billiards. Of these, three (along with Atari) were in the Bay Area; three were in Chicago, the traditional home of gaming companies; two were in Japan; and one each was in Florida, New York, New Jersey, and the United Kingdom. See “Exhibit 3, Major Coin-Operated Amusement Machine Manufacturers,” tabbed business plan, Atari Business Plans Collection, SUSC.
48. From a business plan written in Spring 1974: “Atari sold almost 7,000 Pongs. . . . The total volume for both Pong and Pong-type copies hit 45,000 units in 1973.” There was one legitimate competitor: Atari had sold Bally a license to manufacture Pong.
49. Bound business plan, Atari Business Plans collection, SUSC.
50. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
51. Alcorn’s experience as head of R&D after outside management was brought in: Alcorn, interview by author; Alcorn, CHM interview; description of “Moose” in Wieder, “Fist Full of Quarters.”
52. “Cumulative Unit Trade Sales Year-to-Date, March 74,” tabbed business plan, Atari Business Plans collection, SUSC.
53. Bristow, interview by author, Nov. 9, 2011.
54. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 25, 2011.
55. Steve Mayer, interview by author, Feb. 3, 2012.
56. David Owen, “The Second Coming of Nolan Bushnell,” Playboy, June 1983.
57. “Atari Sells Itself to Survive Success,” BusinessWeek, Nov. 15, 1976.
58. Bristow, interview by author, Nov. 9, 2011.
59. Bushnell to Engineering, Aug. 3, 1973; Alcorn’s response, same date, AA.
60. Historical Statistics of the United States, Table Dg117-130, “Radio and television—stations, sets produced, and households with sets: 1921–2000.”
61. Alcorn, CHM interview. Steve Mayer confirmed the Intel visit in his interview with the author, Feb. 3, 2012.
62. Valentine received 12,500 shares of Atari stock in exchange for “advice on organization, manufacturing, and marketing, as well as development of a business plan” that called for him to help the company raise $2 million.
63. Don Valentine, interview by author, Nov. 7, 2012. Valentine worked at Fairchild for eight years before leaving in 1967 with a number of other Fairchild employees, including Charlie Sporck and Floyd Kvamme, to revivify the moribund National Semiconductor.
64. Valentine, interview by author, Nov. 7, 2012. “They liked the purity of the mutual fund business, the fact that it was regulated [and] we know how to behave, and we’re good at it.”
65. Valentine, interview by author, Nov. 7, 2012.
66. Ibid.; Jeff Moad, “When Your Investors Are Entrepreneurs,” Venture, October 1980.
67. Ibid.; “jester”: Valentine, SV.
68. Hot-tub board meetings were mentioned by Alcorn, Bushnell, and Valentine in interviews with the author and also by Jac Holzman, who became a director after the acquisition by Warner; see Connie Bruck, Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner (Simon & Schuster, 1994): 172.
69. Valentine, SV.
70. Daniel Raff and Peter Temin, “Sears Roebuck in the Twentieth Century: Competition, Complementarities, and the Problem of Wasting Assets,” NBER Working Paper Series on Historical Factors in Long-Run Growth, June 1997: 30, 25.
71. Valentine, SV.
72. Atari, Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, May 31 and Nov. 29, 1975 (the interest rate was prime + 1.25 percent); purchase contract from Sears, signed by Thomas F. Quinn, March 17, 1975, Al Alcorn collection; Sears loan, executed Aug. 1, 1975, per Sept. 18, 1975, board minutes, Atari Business Plan Collection, SUSC.
73. Noyce told Joe Keenan this. Joe Keenan, interview by author, Dec. 3, 2013.
74. The small company that built the cases was called Crafts West. Alcorn, interview by author, Jan. 9, 2012.
75. Sears sold Pong under the name Tele-Game. An example is at http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/dedicated/homepong/homepong-pt2.htm. An AC power adapter sold for an additional $7.99.
76. Raiford Guins to author, Nov. 14, 2016.
77. “Space-Age Pinball,” Time, April 1, 1974, tabbed business plan, SUSC.
78. Atari S-1 mockup, proof of June 24, 1976 , Alcorn papers, SUSC.
1. Ferns and memorabilia: Debby Fife, “The Marketing of Genius,” Stanford Magazine. “MAKE IT HAPPEN”: Randy Block, “Wanted: Ideas to Manage,” Stanford Daily, March 29, 1976.
2. Most of the money came from companies paying for licenses, not from royalties earned by sales of marketed products. During the pilot period, Reimers and Newman implemented a flat 15 percent administrative charge, in addition to out-of-pocket expenses, against gross royalty income to cover costs. At the end of 1969, Newman “bowed out” of the licensing program to begin work on the so-called Newman Report on educational policy. See “Technology Licensing Program Now Has Earned over $200,000,” Campus Report, Nov. 15, 1972; Frank Newman to Kenneth Cuthbertson, Nov. 26, 1969, SUOTL; Niels Reimers to Patterson, Frank Newman, and Earl Cilley, Nov. 5, 1969, SUOTL; Al Miller to Deans, Department Heads, and Principal Investigators, June 10, 1979, Lederberg Papers SC186: 22(B), SUSC; and Richard Lyman to Department Chairmen and Principal Investigators, May 16, 1969, Paul Berg Papers, SC0358: 17, SUSC.
3. “Stanford OTL Revenue/Expense/Breakeven Analysis (10/1/01)” and “OTL Income and Other Figures (2013),” SUOTL.
4. 1971 Annual Report—Technology Licensing, SUOTL. The sound system inventor was John M. Chowning.
5. Ibid.
6. “OTL Income and Other Figures (2013),” SUOTL. In 1971, Reimers hired an associate, John Poitras.
7. Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History (New York: Scribner, 2016): 237.
8. Victor K. McElheny, “Animal Gene Shifted to Bacteria; Aid Seen to Medicine and Farm,” New York Times, May 20, 1974, SUOTL. Since March 2015, the article has appeared online under the title “Gene Transplants Seen Helping Farmers and Doctors.”
9. Niels Reimers, interview by author, Nov. 5, 2014.
10. All Cohen description from Stanley Cohen, ROHO interview, including the Falkow introduction.
11. Stanford Medical History Flickr photo stream and Stanford Daily, May 1974.
12. Cohen explains in his ROHO interview, “Our discoveries were dependent partly on the earlier discovery of DNA ligase and on ten years of basic research with plasmids.” He specifically cites work by Paul Berg, Dale Kaiser, H. Gobind Khorana, D. A. Jackson, Paul Lobban, Janet Mertz, Vittorio Sgaramella, R. H. Symons, and J. H. van de Sande.
13. Reimers, ROHO interview.
14. Stanford had an institutional patent agreement with the National Institutes of Health that fell under the purview of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
15. Reimers, ROHO interview.
16. In the Office of Technology Licensing’s first eighteen months, when only five inventions had been licensed, Reimers reported that “three petitions for title in inventions to sponsors (HEW twice and NSF) were first denied but were eventually granted after much effort including meetings in Washington, D.C. with agency officials”; Licensing Program Progress Report, July 20, 1970, SUOTL.
17. Cohen in “Campus to Commerce: Trailblazers of Technology Transfer,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA6SYaQ6ZZw.
18. Reimers, ROHO interview.
19. Double Helix Medals Dinner, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTuy4_e9O08.
20. Genentech GenenLab notebook at http://blog.zymergi.com/2013/01/origins-biotech-genentech.html.
21. Boyer’s lab learned that EcoR1 could be used in recombinant DNA after reading Janet E. Mertz and Ronald W. Davis, “Cleavage of DNA by RI Restriction Endonuclease Generates Cohesive Ends,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 1972: 3370–4. Many thanks to Doogab Yi for his technical review of this chapter.
22. Stanley Cohen, interview by author, June 3, 2015.
23. Cohen, in “Stanley Cohen and Herb Boyer, Co-Recipients of 1996 Lemelson-MIT Prize,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3H-Uzts108. Cohen says something very similar in Stanley Cohen, “DNA Cloning: A Personal View After 40 Years,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 110, no. 39 (Sept. 24, 2013): 15521–9.
24. Stanley Cohen, in “Campus to Commerce” video.
25. Niels Reimers to File, Notes on a conversation with Stan Cohen, July 29, 1974, SUOTL: “Herb Boyer is willing to cooperate, also does not want personal gain.”
26. See Stanley Cohen to Niels Reimers, June 9, 1975 and Niels Reimers to Josephine Opalka, June 26, 1974; Cohen, “DNA Cloning.”
27. Stanley Cohen to Bertram Rowland, Jan. 22, 1975, SUOTL.
28. Keith Yamamoto, in “Campus to Commerce” video.
29. Stanley Cohen to Bertram Rowland, Jan. 22, 1975, SUOTL.
30. S. N. Cohen, A.C.Y. Chang, H. W. Boyer, and R. B. Helling, “Construction of Biologically Functional Bacterial Plasmids in Vitro,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 70, no. (1973): 3240–4. Helling was a researcher working in Boyer’s lab.
31. Josephine Opalka (UC patent administrator) to Niels Reimers, July 30, 1974, SUOTL.
32. Niels Reimers to Josephine Opalka, Aug. 2, 1974, SUOTL.
33. Reimers, ROHO interview.
34. Niels Reimers to Cassius L. Kirk, Aug. 22, 1974, SUOTL.
35. Niels Reimers to Gerald Lieberman (dean of research and vice provost), Dec. 11, 1979, SUOTL.
36. On the UC patent office, see Mark Owens (assistant vice president at UC and former patent administrator), “Internal Administration of Technology Transfer: Organization of a University Patent Office,” in Technology Transfer University Opportunities and Responsibilities. A Report on the Proceedings of a National Conference on the Management of University Technology Resources (conference held at Case Western Reserve University, October 1974): 58–65.
37. Reimers speech (“Mechanisms for Technology Transfer: Marketing University Technology”) and Owens speech at the Case Western Reserve conference, October 1974.
38. Reimers, ROHO interview. One historian has pointed out that “until the last two decades of the century, the focus of UC patent policy was on making faculty inventions available to the private sector; marketing and making money from them were secondary concerns. It was a far cry from the situation at Stanford.” Sally Smith Hughes, “Making Dollars Out of DNA,” Isis 92 (2001): 541–75.
39. Agreement Concerning Rights In Invention, Aug. 29, 1975, SUOTL.
40. The $107 million to Stanford would be evenly split among inventor, department, and the university. Precise amounts: total royalties: $254,763,248; total admin fee: $38,214,63; total expenses: $1,801,761; total share for each school: $107,373,658. “Cohen-Boyer Royalties and Distribution FY 1979–80 Through FY 1998–1999,” SUOTL.
41. Reimers, ROHO interview.
42. Sally Smith Hughes pointed out that Genentech and other companies began using recombinant DNA technology even before the Cohen-Boyer patent was issued in 1980. Nonetheless, she added, the broad claims in the patent that required anyone using recombinant DNA to buy a license, coupled with the landmark Chakrabarty decision that allowed the patenting of living organisms, meant that “the issuance of the Cohen-Boyer patent served to reinforce confidence that commercial biotechnology had a future and was a sound investment opportunity.” Hughes, “Making Dollars Out of DNA”: 572.
43. See Bill Carpenter to Stanley N. Cohen, Sept. 4, 1974; Bill Carpenter to File, Sept. 18, 1974, Re: Dr. Herbert Boyer [handwritten on yellow legal pad]; Bill Carpenter to Niels Reimers, Oct. 18, 1974, all SUOTL.
44. “Bertram Rowland and the Cohen/Boyer Cloning Patent,” GWU Law posting, https://web.archive.org/web/20160105155929/http://www.law.gwu.edu/Academics/FocusAreas/IP/Pages/Cloning.aspx. Rowland worked for the firm Flehr, Hohbach, Test, Albritton & Herbert.
45. In 1959, scientists discovered that bacteria contain plasmids, in addition to chromosomes. “Recombinant DNA in the Lab,” Smithsonian, http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/birth-of-biotech?ogmt_page=recombinant-dna-in-the-lab.
46. Stanley N. Cohen, interview by author, June 3, 2015.
47. Rowland says that “Boyer was not available for discussion,” and Cohen, in his ROHO interview, says that Boyer did not speak with Rowland before the patent application was drafted.
48. Rowland: “Cohen asked me why I was limiting the claims to bacteria, as plasmids are also available in eukaryotes or one could use viruses for cloning in mammalian cells. So far as eukaryotic plasmids, there was one yeast plasmid known and viruses had not been previously manipulated and shown to be capable of introducing foreign DNA into a mammalian host and the foreign DNA replicated.” “Bertram Rowland and the Cohen/Boyer Cloning Patent.”
49. Niels Reimers to Norman Latker, Aug. 20, 1974, SUOTL.
50. P. Berg and J. E. Mertz, “Personal Reflections on the Origins and Emergence of Recombinant DNA Technology,” Genetics 184 (2010): 9–17.
51. Cohen, ROHO interview.
52. Told Reimers did not want: Reimers, ROHO interview: 22. Cohen using the Arpanet: Cohen oral history and Josephine Opalka to Sally Hines, Sept. 8, 1976, which references a note dated Nov. 3, 1975, that was sent to Cohen in England.
53. Maxine Singer and Dieter Soll to Philip Handler, July 17, 1973, at http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/CDBBCG.
54. “Potential Biohazards of Recombinant DNA Molecules,” Science, 26 July 1974, letter reprinted in James D. Watson and John Tooze, The DNA Story: A Documentary History of Gene Cloning (San Francisco: H. W. Freeman and Co., 1981): 11.
55. Mukherjee, The Gene: 230.
56. Michael Rogers, “The Pandora’s Box Congress,” Rolling Stone, June 19, 1975. The conference was the second on recombinant DNA risks that was held at Asilomar—the first was in January 1973—but it was so extraordinary that it has come to be known as the Asilomar conference. Only six of the 150 Asilomar scientists “now fiddling with the basic mechanics of reproduction,” as one journalist put it, were female, but one woman played a pivotal role: the molecular biologist Maxine Singer was an organizer of the conference and among the very first to call attention to the potential risks.
57. Robert Pollack of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, quoted in “Microbiology: Hazardous Profession Faces New Uncertainties,” Science, Nov. 9, 1973, reprinted in Watson and Tooze, The DNA Story.
58. Berg, quoted in “Secret of Life: Playing God,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3wg-W3Slow.
59. Mukherjee, The Gene: 232.
60. Berg and Mertz, “Personal Reflections.”
61. Anonymous review included in Josephine Opalka to Niels Reimers, July 11, 1975, SUOTL.
62. Niels Reimers to William F. Massy, Feb. 10, 1975, SUOTL.
63. Doogab Yi, The Recombinant University: Genetic Engineering and the Emergence of Biotechnology at Stanford, 1959–1980, Princeton University doctoral dissertation, 2008: 216.
64. Reimers, “Mechanisms for Technology Transfer.”
65. Niels Reimers to Bruce Hinchliffe, April 18, 1975, SUOTL.
66. Niels Reimers to William F. Massy, March 12, 1976, SUOTL.
67. Norm Latker, quoted in Debby Fife, “The Marketing of Genius,” Stanford Magazine.
68. Reimers, quoted in Barbie Fields, “Special Office Aids in Securing Patents for Campus Inventors,” Stanford Daily, Nov. 11, 1977. The historian Doogab Yi has described the position Reimers adopted thus: “They claimed that the ‘public’ ownership of inventions was fundamentally at odds with the promotion of the public interest through development and licensing.” Yi, The Recombinant University: 177.
1. Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, Dec. 31, 1971, and Dec. 31, 1972, ACM; Moody’s OTC Industrial Manual 1973: 391.
2. Mike Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 4, 2015.
3. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
4. Robert N. Noyce and Marcian E. Hoff, Jr., “A History of Microprocessor Development at Intel,” IEEE Micro, February 1981: 13.
5. Federico Faggin, “The Birth of the Microprocessor,” Byte, March 1992; Bill Davidow, quoted in Davidow, Flath, and Noyce oral history, courtesy Intel.
6. Tom R. Sawyer to author, Feb. 7, 2016.
7. Mimi Real, A Revolution in Progress: A History of Intel to Date (Palo Alto, CA: Intel, 1983): 9.
8. Ibid.: 26.
9. Andy Grove, interview by author, Aug. 19, 2003; Grove, quoted in Sporck, Spinoff: 199–200.
10. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
11. Arthur Rock, interview by author, April 1, 2016.
12. Grove, conversation with author, Nov. 11, 2015.
13. Grove, quoted in Charles E. Sporck and Richard Molay, Spinoff: A Personal History of the Industry That Changed the World (Saranac Lake, NY: Saranac Lake Publishing, 2001): 199–200.
14. Ann Bowers, interview by author, Nov. 7, 2015.
15. Markkula, SUSG interview.
16. Richard Immel, “After Bad 2nd Half, Semiconductor Firms See More of the Same for Much of This Year,” New York Times, Jan. 9, 1975; Ramon C. Sevilla, “Employment Practices and Industrial Restructuring: A Case Study of the Semiconductor Industry in Silicon Valley, 1955–1991,” PhD dissertation, UCLA, 1992, Table 3.10.
17. Paul Plansky, “Protests Mark Wema Meeting,” Electronic News, Dec. 2, 1974.
18. Although Carsten was named vice president and director of marketing within the components division, his was the only marketing title in the company, aside from someone in the digital watch organization.
19. “I did not feel comfortable with Jack Carsten at all” is Markkula’s only comment. Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 4, 2015. Carsten was supposed to begin work in January 1975, but illness delayed his start until April. Carsten, CHM interview.
20. Even without taking into account any additional options he might have been granted while at Intel, the two stock splits since Markkula had joined in January 1971 meant that by 1975 he owned 2.25 times more shares than his original generous grant. The strike price (what he had paid for each share) was $6.22; meanwhile, Intel stock was trading at about $45/share.
21. Markkula, quoted in “The Milliard Dollar Armas Clifford Markkula Realized His Dream,” translation of an unidentified Finnish article published in 1981, ACM.
22. Markkula, interview by author, Dec. 4, 2015.
23. Allan Tommervik, “Exec Apple: Mike Markkula,” Softalk, June 1981.
24. Markkula began serving on the Cupertino Planning Commission in January 1977 and resigned in April of the following year. Beth Ebben, Cupertino planning office, to author, Dec. 23, 2015.
25. Markkula, CHM interview.
26. Markkula, SUSG interview.
27. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016; Markkula, CHM interview.
28. Markkula, SV.
1. Scott Herhold, “The Story Behind Joe Colla’s Famous 1976 Highway Stunt,” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 16, 2013. The overpass was at the intersection of Highways 101, 280, and 680 in San Jose.
2. Surveillance Technology. Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Special Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Commerce of the Committee on Commerce, United States Senate 94th. Congress, First Session on Surveillance Technology, June 23 and Sept. 9–10, 1975. An excellent summary of the Data Center debate is Federal Data Banks and Constitutional Rights: A Study of Data Systems on Individuals Maintained by Agencies of the United States Government, prepared by the staff of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, as part III of the subcommittee’s study of federal data banks, computers, and the Bill of Rights (1974), pp. xv–xviii. For more on the privacy debate in the 1970s, see Frederick S. Lane, American Privacy: The 400-Year History of Our Most Contested Right (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011).
1. History of California Minimum Wage, State of California Department of Industrial Relations, http://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/minimumwagehistory.htm.
2. Alexis Madrigal, “Not Even Silicon Valley Escapes History,” The Atlantic, July 23, 2013.
3. ROLM Annual Report, 1977.
4. ROLM S-1, Sept. 15, 1976.
5. Ibid.
6. Half of employees: ROLM’s S-1, filed Sept. 15, 1976, stated that ROLM had 397 employees, 200 of whom were in production.
7. Fawn Alvarez Talbott, interview by author, June 19, 2015.
8. Ibid. Jeff Smith, an engineer who worked in manufacturing, agrees that “there really wasn’t a lot of discipline on the line; everybody was kind of free to do it their own way.” Jeff Smith, interview by author, Feb. 10, 2017.
9. The relevant clip of the “Job Changing” episode that aired Sept. 15, 1952, is hilarious and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzLBSBzPI.
10. Bob Maxfield, interview by author, Jan. 30, 2017.
11. Ibid.
12. Talbott, interview by author, Jan. 26, 2017.
13. Marcie Axelrad, “Profile of the Electronics Industry Workforce in the Santa Clara Valley: A Preliminary Report from the Project on Health and Safety in Electronics (PHASE),” July 1979, PSC.
14. Michael W. Miller, “Unions Curtain Organizing in High Tech,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 13, 1984; Ramon C. Sevilla, “Employment Practices and Industrial Restructuring: A Case Study of the Semiconductor Industry in Silicon Valley, 1955–1991,” PhD dissertation, UCLA, 1992: 172, 292, 299.
15. “Non-Union Seminar Slated,” Palo Alto Times, Dec. 26, 1973, PSC.
16. Many thanks to Martin Manley, who worked as a machinist and organizer in Silicon Valley at that time, for sharing the perspective of unions toward organizing in the Valley. Manley left his work as a machinist to study at the Harvard Business School. He later served as assistant secretary of labor for President Bill Clinton and became an Internet entrepreneur, founding Alibris, among the world’s largest online rare- and used-book sellers. Martin Manley, interview by author, Feb. 21, 2013.
17. Talbott, interview by author, Jan. 26, 2017.
18. Smith, interview by author, Feb. 9, 2017.
19. Ibid.
20. Talbott, interview by author, July 24, 2013.
21. Vineta Alvarez Eubank, interview by author.
22. Talbott, interview by author, July 24, 2013.
1. Manny Gerard, interview by author, Jan. 23, 2012.
2. Ibid.
3. Warner holdings from Warner Communications Annual Report, 1976.
4. Atari S-1 mockup, proof of June 24, 1976, Alcorn Papers, SUSC.
5. Doubling the price: Atari board minutes, Sept. 2, 1975, Atari Business Plan collection, SUSC; author’s interviews with Al Alcorn and Nolan Bushnell.
6. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 31, 2013.
7. Stella was the name for the chip that talked to the video display and sound in the four-chip system. Tekla Perry and Paul Wallich, “Design Case History: The Atari Video Computer System,” IEEE Spectrum, March 1983: 45–51. Key players on the Stella team from Grass Valley included Joseph Decuir, Larry Emmons, Steve Mayer, Ron Milner, and Jay Miner.
8. Arthur Young & Company to William White [vice president for finance, Atari], June 18, 1975, Alcorn Papers, SUSC.
9. Alcorn, interview by author, Jan. 9, 2012.
10. “Pong Inventor Rich in Year,” Bakersfield Californian, July 18, 1976.
11. All Gerard quotes: Manny Gerard, interview by author, Jan. 23, 2012.
12. Alcorn, speaking at “Atari’s Impact on Silicon Valley” panel, Sept. 8, 2016.
13. Ralph Blumenthal, “ ‘Death Race’ Game Gains Favor, but Not with the Safety Council,” New York Times, Dec. 28, 1976.
14. Ibid.; Carly A. Kocurek, “The Agony and the Exidy: A History of Video Game Violence and the Legacy of Death Race,” Game Studies, September 2012, http://gamestudies.org/1201/articles/carly_kocurek; Bushnell quote: Kent, Ultimate History: 92.
15. Gerard wrote the copy for the 1976 Warner annual report announcing the acquisition of Atari: “Toys and games of skill go back to the early history of human life. Stones, bones, and wood were early materials for games, and many of those are still highly salable products today . . . virtually every game that was ever enjoyed by a lot of people is still made and sold. Electronic games are a logical step in this historic process.”
16. BusinessWeek estimated that Atari had earned $3.5 million on sales of $39 million in fiscal year 1976. “Atari Sells Itself to Survive Success,” BusinessWeek, Nov. 15, 1976.
17. Warner Communications, 1976 Annual Report.
18. At Atari, 5 percent of pretax profit was split among twenty-four employees, the top seven of whom were compensated based on salary; the rest received bonuses based on performance. At Warner, the bonus system was even richer. Manny Gerard was not surprised to hear that the bonus had gotten better; Ross, he said, had offered wonderful incentive compensation without being asked for it. Ross once told BusinessWeek that “the way a division is run is up to the CEO.” “How Steve Ross’s Hands-off Approach Is Backfiring at Warner,” BusinessWeek, Aug. 8, 1983.
19. In their interviews with the author and elsewhere, Don Valentine and Nolan Bushnell both recalled the flight with Eastwood and Locke. Bruck, Master of the Game, confirms the story and adds the detail about the hotel. Valentine claims that Dirty Harry even made Bushnell a sandwich, but Joe Keenan says that the movie stars had no interaction with the men from Atari.
20. Bushnell’s ownership percentage: “Games, Inc.” [summary of Atari ownership structure at the time of the Warner acquisition]; owner requested anonymity.
21. Bushnell, in Stella at 20 video.
22. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
23. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 31, 2013.
24. Gerard, interview by author, Jan. 23, 2012; Alcorn, interview by author, Jan. 9, 2012.
25. Gerard, interview by author, Jan. 23, 2012. Bushnell’s ex-wife allegedly threatened to challenge their divorce agreement after reading an article about Bushnell in the July 18, 1976, issue of the Bakersfield Californian. Goldberg and Vendel say that Bushnell’s ex-wife received $300,000 in exchange for dropping all claims (Atari: Business Is Fun: 205).
26. Gerard, interview by author, Jan. 23, 2012.
27. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
28. Valentine and the other venture capitalists received cash for their stake in the company.
29. Gerard, interview by author, Jan. 23, 2012.
1. In ASK’s 1974 balance sheet, Kurtzig valued the to-be-released minicomputer version of MANMAN at $150,000, twice the Tymshare version and six times more than the batch-processing version. ASK Computer Services, Inc., Balance Sheet, July 1, 1974, SK; ASK Computer Services, Business Review, Dec. 1, 1976, SK.
2. Sandra Kurtzig, CEO: Building a Four Hundred Million Dollar Company from the Ground Up (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991): 88.
3. Marty Browne, interview by author, July 12, 2015. “There is not a program that Sandy wrote that we didn’t have to rewrite,” he says.
4. Browne, interview by author, July 12, 2015.
5. Kurtzig, CEO: 111.
6. ASK, Income Statement, June 30, 1975, SK.
7. Sandra Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
8. Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations: 131.
9. Jack McNamee, quoted in Esther Surden, “Manufacturing Mini Gives Hughes ‘More Control,’ ” Computerworld, Aug. 30, 1976.
10. “A Mini Is Not Just a Small Big Computer,” HP advertisement, probably 1977, SK.
11. Kurtzig, CEO: 114.
12. Ibid.: 116; APICS News, November 1976, courtesy Marty Browne.
13. Kurtzig, quoted in “The Woman President,” Computer Manufacturing Opportunities, September 1979: 17.
14. HP charged ASK a discounted $67,000 ($29,000 down, balance due later) for the computer, which retailed for about $80,000. Kurtzig, CEO: 113.
15. ASK 1976 business plan, “Capitalization,” SK.
16. Liz Seckler, interview by author, July 29, 2015.
17. Stanford Computer Science timeline, http://www-cs.stanford.edu/timeline.
18. Seckler, interview by author, July 29, 2015.
19. Howard Klein, interview by author, July 14, 2015.
20. Intelligent Factory: 1976 business plan, SK.
21. Kurtzig, CEO: 122.
22. Ibid.: 124.
23. ASK Statement of Operations for years ending June 30, 1975, and June 30, 1976, SK. Kurtzig’s salary increased from $12,000 in 1975 to $24,000 in 1976.
24. Joint Venture Silicon Valley, “Venture Capital by Industry,” Silicon Valley Index 2015; Jon Levine, “5,000 Entrepreneurs . . . and Counting,” Venture, January 1982.
25. Larry Ellison, quoted in Silicon Valley Historical Association, “Billionaires: Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Who Made Their Fortune Without Venture Capital,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vXs6JqMu7U.
26. ASK S-1, Aug. 6, 1981.
27. Kurtzig, CEO: 152.
1. Liebe F. Cavalieri, “New Strains of Life—or Death,” New York Times Magazine, Aug. 22, 1976.
2. “Dr. Jekyll”: Friends of the Earth, May 1976. “Doomsday”: Time (cover story), April 18, 1977; “Pulling Back from the Apocalypse,” Not Man Apart, January 1977.
3. Charles McCabe, “On Playing God,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 4, 1977, reprinted in Watson and Tooze, DNA Controversy: 165.
4. “Gene-Splicing: At Grass-Roots Level a Hundred Flowers Bloom,” Science, Feb. 11, 1977.
5. Alfred E. Vellucci to Phillip Handler, May 16, 1977, reprinted in James D. Watson and John Tooze, The DNA Story: A Documentary History of Gene Cloning (San Francisco: H. W. Freeman and Co., 1981): 206. Vellucci quoted in “Test Tube Laboratory Fine, but Build It Somewhere Else,” Palo Alto Times, June 16, 1976. On Harvard Yard: “Recombinant DNA: Cambridge City Council Votes Moratorium,” Science, July 1976.
6. Gene Bylinsky, “DNA Can Build Companies, Too,” Fortune, June 16, 1980.
7. “Gene Splicing Sheds Its Mad-Scientist Image,” BusinessWeek, May 16, 1983.
8. Kennedy’s opening statement, Watson and Tooze, DNA Story: 144. Norman J. Latker, Patent Branch Chief at DHEW, read out loud to Reimers over the phone the proposed testimony that the director of the NIH, Donald Fredrickson, planned to give during the hearings. Niels Reimers to File, Sept. 14, 1976, SUOTL.
9. “Gene Splicing: Cambridge Citizens OK Research but Want More Safety,” Science, January 1977; “Gene-Splicing: At Grass-Roots Level a Hundred Flowers Bloom,” Science, Feb. 11, 1977.
10. “Who Should Control Recombinant DNA?,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 1977. Jeremy Rifkin led the protesters, who called themselves the People’s Business Commission. Chant detail is from Jeffrey Fox, “Genetic Engineering Industry Emerges,” Chemical and Engineering News, March 17, 1980.
11. Donald Fredrickson to Robert Rosenzweig, May 2, 1978, SUOTL. Technically, it was a letter written by Stanford’s vice president for public affairs, requesting “new consideration of the propriety of our proceeding as planned and authorized,” that prompted the review. Robert Rosenzweig to Distribution, June 30, 1976; Rosenzweig to Those Interested in Recombinant DNA, June 4, 1976; Rosenzweig to Donald Frederickson, June 18, 1976; Rosenzweig to Joseph Califano, Jr. Feb. 15, 1977, SUOTL.
12. Doogab Yi, The Recombinant University: Genetic Engineering and the Emergence of Biotechnology at Stanford, 1959–1980, Princeton University doctoral dissertation, 2008: 218.
13. Paul Berg, at a May 21, 1976, meeting with Reimers, Cohen, Joshua Lederberg, and several Stanford administrators, quoted in Yi, The Recombinant University: 209.
14. Niels Reimers, interview by author, May 15, 2015.
15. See also Cohen, “Recombinant DNA: Fact and Fiction,” statement prepared for a meeting of the Committee on Environmental Health, California Medical Association, Nov. 18, 1976, and “The Nobel Letters,” Watson and Tooze, The DNA Story: 112.
16. Niels Reimers to Rodney Adams [Stanford treasurer], April 8, 1976, SUOTL.
17. “Licensing Plan,” Niels Reimers to File, July 13, 1976, SUOTL.
18. “So, Bob”: Manny Levinson, introduction to Swanson, ROHO interview.
19. Peter Meyer, Eugene Kleiner: Engineer, Venture Capitalist, Founding Father of Silicon Valley (Brooklyn, NY: Polytechnic Institute, 2006), EKF.
20. Robert Lenzner, “General Doriot: Time for Credit,” Boston Sunday Globe, March 25, 1979; Doriot, Manufacturing Class Notes (Boston: Board of Trustees, The French Library in Boston, 1993): 7.
21. The company, called Antex, made light-emitting diodes.
22. Tom Perkins, Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins (New York: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007): 115.
23. Cetus’s original product was going to be a labor-saving machine that screened microorganisms (identifying ones with a resistance to antibiotics, for example).
24. Perkins, quoted in Sally Smith Hughes, Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011): 32.
25. David Arscott, interview by author, May 13, 2015.
26. Bob Swanson, ROHO interview.
27. Perkins, quoted in an undated manuscript, “The High Rollers,” with handwritten notes by Kleiner, EKF.
28. Swanson, ROHO interview. In his ROHO interview, Perkins says that it was Kleiner, in particular, who wanted to fire Swanson. This is impossible to verify, given the deaths of all three men.
29. Swanson, ROHO interview.
30. Ibid.
31. Brook Byers, interview by author, Oct. 8, 2015. Byers joined Kleiner & Perkins after Swanson left and remains a partner at the firm. Byers is one of the world’s premier investors in biotechnology, a passion he says was ignited, in part, by his conversations with Swanson.
32. Bob Swanson, speech Sept. 17, 1978, EKF. The speech was given in New York, but the audience is not indicated.
33. Herb Boyer, ROHO interview.
34. Ibid.
35. Stanley Falkow, “I’ll Have the Chopped Liver Please, or How I Learned to Love the Clone,” ASM News 67, no. 11 (2001).
36. Manny Levinson, introduction to Bob Swanson, ROHO interview.
37. Brook Byers, ROHO interview.
38. Hughes, Genentech: 35.
39. Swanson, quoted in Hughes, Genentech: 37; Genentech S-1, Oct. 14, 1980.
40. Randall Rothenberg, “Robert A. Swanson, Chief Genetic Officer,” Esquire, December 1984.
41. Swanson, ROHO interview. This is also the interview referenced in the footnote.
42. “Introduction,” undated document [but clearly 1982], EKF.
43. Testimony by Thomas J. Perkins Before the U.S. Department of Commerce Hearing on the Future for New Technology Based Ventures, April 3, 1976.
44. Swanson, ROHO interview.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Report of Committee on Rules and Jurisdiction, report from the Divisional Senate Committee on Rules and Jurisdiction, Jan. 11, 1979, SSH.
48. Boyer, ROHO interview. “We played a cruel trick” (in footnote): Sally Smith Hughes, Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011): 62.
49. “Genentech Outline for Discussion Kleiner & Perkins, 1 April 1976,” SSH.
50. See Cohen, ROHO interview, and Boyer, ROHO interview.
51. Swanson pitched Crocker Capital in March 1976.
52. Fred Middleton says of Perkins in late 1975–early 1976, “I don’t think that at the time he had a tremendous amount of confidence in Bob” (Middleton, ROHO interview). Regis McKenna, who worked with Genentech, has a “vague memory” that Swanson had approached him for advice on asking Perkins for an investment. Swanson, McKenna says, was concerned because he knew that “Tom wasn’t high on Bob as an associate.” McKenna, email to author, April 18, 2015.
53. Eugene Kleiner to Nathaniel Weiner [Corporations Counsel], May 7, 1976, SSH.
54. Tom Perkins, ROHO interview.
55. Ibid.
56. “Genentech Outline for Discussion, Kleiner & Perkins,” April 1, 1976, SSH. Genentech called itself “a development stage company” until the hormone was cloned.
57. Swanson talks about Perkins’s insistence on exclusivity in his ROHO interview; David Arscott, who had worked with Swanson at Citibank and was in touch with him through that period, distinctly remembers Swanson telling him about Perkins’s stipulation. (Arscott mentioned this without any prompting.) Typical amounts invested in companies in the first K&P fund ranged from roughly $120,000 to $500,000. Kleiner & Perkins, Summary of Venture Investments (1), EKF.
58. Perkins, quoted on p. 17 of an undated manuscript, “The High Rollers,” with handwritten notes from Kleiner, EKF.
59. At its founding Genentech acquired interest in the Boyer and Swanson partnership valued at $24,000 (48,000 shares of stock). Genentech Inc., A Development Stage Company, Financial Statements for Year Ended December 31, 1977. Courtesy Genentech.
60. Boyer, ROHO interview.
61. Genentech, December 1976 Business Plan, quoted in Hughes, Genentech: 47.
62. Swanson, ROHO interview.
63. Swanson to Stanford University, University of California, April 19, 1976, SSH. There is no mention of receipt of a letter in the Office of Technology Licensing files until June 1976, and the letter itself is not included.
64. See, e.g., Niels Reimers to Distribution, Nov. 15, 1976, SUOTL; Niels Reimers, “Mechanisms for Technology Transfer,” Case Western Reserve conference, October 1974.
65. Niels Reimers to Robert Rosenzweig, June 11, 1976, SUOTL. Stan Cohen, in his interview with the author, says that he urged Reimers to license nonexclusively.
66. See, e.g., John Poitras to File, Telecon with Bob Swanson, March 17, 1977, SUOTL.
67. Niels Reimers to File, July 15, July 22, Aug. 11, Aug. 28, Sept. 13, Sept. 14, and Nov. 2, 1976. For a meticulous accounting of the steps to patenting the Cohen-Boyer process, see Sally Smith Hughes, “Making Dollars Out of DNA,” Isis 92 (2001).
68. The patent filed Nov. 4, 1974 (ser. no. 520,591), the so-called parent application, was abandoned in favor of a continuation-in-part, ser. no. 687,430, filed May 17, 1976. Ser. no. 687,430 was then abandoned for two continuations-in-part: ser. no. 959,288 (filed Nov. 9, 1978) and ser. no. 1,000,021 (filed on Jan. 4, 1979). Sally Hines to Leroy B. Randall [acting patent chief, Health and Human Services], July 15, 1980, SUOTL.
69. Kathleen J. Sullivan, “Richard W. Lyman, Stanford’s Seventh President, Dead at 88,” Stanford Report, May 27, 2012; Gene I. Maeroff, “ ‘Harvard of the West’ Climbing in the Ratings,” New York Times, Oct. 10, 1977.
70. Robert Rosenzweig to Those Interested in Recombinant DNA, June 4, 1976, SUOTL.
71. Stanley Cohen to Niels Reimers, June 14, 1976.
72. Ibid. In his ROHO interview, Cohen explained, “It became clear to me that whatever position the university took, it was not realistic for me to simply say, ‘Well, I have nothing to do with it.’ ”
73. Niels Reimers to Bertram Rowland, March 17, 1978, SUOTL.
74. Handwritten note to Josephine Opalka, June 2, 1975, reporting on a call from Reimers. “He seemed worried that nothing would happen until your return on 7/7,” the note says. In response, Opalka wrote at the bottom, “Let him worry a little bit.” SSH.
75. Sally Hines, interview by author, May 11, 2015.
76. Interviewee requested anonymity.
77. Reimers, interview by author, May 15, 2015.
78. “Cohen-Boyer Royalties and Distribution FY 1979–80 Through FY 1998–1999,” SUOTL.
79. “Stanford OTL Revenue/Expense/Breakeven Analysis (10/1/01” and “OTL Income and Other Figures (2013),” SUOTL.
80. Niels Reimers to Arnold, Feb. 17, 1978, SUOTL.
81. Niels Reimers to File, “Various Conversations Regarding Recombinant DNA,” July 15, 1976, SUOTL.
82. “Flashback to 1970,” recollection by Sally Hines, in 40 Years of Discovery, Office of Technology Licensing anniversary publication. Genentech held Friday-afternoon celebrations that they called Ho-hos. Tandem and ROLM were also renowned for their Friday-afternoon beer bashes.
1. Mike Rose to “Bob,” June 23, 1976, Apple Computer Original Advertising File, Misc 551, SUSC.
2. Gordon Moore, quoted in Gene Bylinsky, “How Intel Won Its Bet on Memory Chips,” Fortune, November 1973: 143.
3. Mike Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
4. Ibid.
5. Trip Hawkins, interview by author, May 20, 2016; he was describing a different early hobby store, but the clientele was the same.
6. b indicated a blank space and (RET) the return key. Apple-1 Operation Manual: 2.
7. Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer (New York: Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1984): 209; at p. 203, Wozniak calls computers “the love of my life.”
8. Campbell-Kelly says the typical cost of a minicomputer was $20,000 for complete installation. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine (New York: Basic Books, 1996): 238–9. Farrah Fawcett swimsuit poster: Kurt Lassen, “The Farrah Fawcett-Majors Phenomenon: A Case of Too Much Fame Too Soon?,” Nashua Telegraph, April 30, 1977. Smithsonian curator comment: Jessica Gresko, “Farrah Fawcett’s Red Swimsuit Goes to Smithsonian,” Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2011.
9. Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2006): 196.
10. Having the BASIC interpreter written directly into ROM meant that (1) it was immediately available when the machine turned on and the user hit a few keys, and (2) users would not have the then-common frustration of hitting the wrong key and losing the program language itself, in addition to the user’s own set of instructions.
11. Wozniak’s description of his demo to Peddle; Veit’s description of the demo he saw in the garage is at http://www.pc-history.org/apple.htm.
12. Markkula, SUSG interview.
13. Ibid.
14. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
15. Wozniak and Smith, iWoz.
16. Size and location of Homebrew meetings: Freiberger and Swaine, Fire in the Valley: 106. Witch Mountain: Christopher Pollock, Reel San Francisco Stories: An Annotated Filmography of the Bay Area (San Francisco: Castor & Pollux P., 2013): 75–6.
17. Campbell-Kelly, Computer: 240.
18. The music played by “picking up buss harmonics and running a clever timing loop.” Bob Lash, “Memoir of a Homebrew Computer Club Member,” www.bambi.net/bob/homebrew.html.
19. Michael Moritz, Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World (London: Overlook Press, 2010): 157.
20. Wozniak, “Homebrew and How the Apple Came to Be,” http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/homebrew_and_how_the_apple.php. Felsenstein is listed as the “Girl Friday” in the Berkeley Barb issue of April 11–17, 1969.
21. Keith Britton, quoted in Freiberger and Swaine, Fire in the Valley: 104.
22. Wozniak and Smith, iWoz: 176.
23. The engineer was Steve Landesberg. Phil Roybal, who joined Apple very early on, also worked with Carter on the business plan. Carter, CHM interview.
24. Victor McElheny, “Revolution in Silicon Valley,” New York Times, June 20, 1976.
1. “XEROX World Conference 1977” (brochure), XPA.
2. “Shape of Tomorrow”: film shown at Boca Raton World Conference, XPA.
3. David T. Kearns and David A. Nadler, Prophets in the Dark: How Xerox Reinvented Itself and Beat Back the Japanese (New York: HarperBusiness, 1992): 97.
4. 1977 share price from Yahoo Finance.
5. C. Peter McColough, World Conference 1977 speech; Kearns, “About Xerox People,” Nov. 9, 1977, XPA.
6. N. M. Beyer to John Ellenby, “Boca Raton—Cost Estimate,” Oct. 25, 1977, XPA. Beyer writes that the total estimate is “$218.7 (in 000s),” which would be $2.2 million, but that number seems too high, unless it factors in the value of the equipment ($1.6 million, according to a handwritten note titled “Boca Raton Video” in XPA).
7. Dealer minutes, July 30, 1974, RWT.
8. Jerry Elkind to Jack Goldman, “A Computer Business Opportunity,” Feb. 11, 1974, RWT. Though little immediately followed from this letter, it appears that Goldman, the head of research of Xerox and the driving force behind PARC, was sympathetic; he met with Elkind and Taylor several times.
9. “Let me apologize in advance for that phrase—I was probably conditioned unconsciously by 9 years of Washington exposure to such phrases as ‘missile gap’ and ‘credibility gap.’ ” Bob Taylor to George Pake, LRP Working Paper no. 2, May 2, 1975, XPA.
10. “Intro to Office System Research: Robert Taylor CSL, August 1976,” video V07, XPA.
11. Chuck Geschke, interview by author, April 21, 2014.
12. Chuck Geschke to Distribution, “Final Boca Raton Materials List,” Oct. 21, 1977, XPA; Geschke, interview by author, Apr. 21, 2014; Timothy Mott to Distribution, “Schedule,” Nov. 7, 1977, XPA.
13. W. Graham Price [Corporate Security] to John Ellenby, “Boca Raton and Worldstage,” Sept. 29, 1977, XPA.
14. Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013.
15. Ibid.
16. 80 percent: ibid.; 18 percent: Bob Taylor to Bob Spinrad, “Is the message one of appreciation?,” Aug. 18, 1982.
17. Pake’s handwritten notes titled “1977 Xerox World Conference—What It Was,” XPA. They appear to be notes for a talk he planned to give upon returning to PARC after Boca Raton.
18. Taylor, interview by author, July 18, 2014.
19. Performance reviews, RWT. “Because Bob is good” (in footnote): Sproull to Sutherland (acting director of PARC), May 4, 1977, RWT.
20. Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: HarperCollins, 2000): 379. Beyond the startling comparison (and Hiltzik points it out as such), Pake rarely spoke a word against Taylor. However, when Pake made a list of “pioneering managers” at PARC, he never elevated Taylor above “associate manager,” and he listed that qualified title before Taylor’s name, while every other manager was named before his title was given. George Pake, “R&D Management and the Establishment of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, January 1985,” remarks for the IEEE convocation “The Second Century Begins,” XPA.
21. On sneaking into Futures Day: Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013. In his interview with the author, Geschke said, “I think I knew he was down there and was going to try to get in.”
22. Description of video and presentation from “The Shape of Tomorrow,” video shown at Futures Day, XPA.
23. Elizabeth Peer, “How to Work the Thing,” Newsweek, Feb. 22, 1982.
24. Fawn Alvarez Talbott, interview by author, July 24, 2014.
25. That was the intention, but the machine had a long way to go, as a quick look at the 127-page Alto User’s Handbook (1976), with its lists of instructions, makes clear.
26. Kearns and Nadler, Prophets in The Dark: 100. When George Pake got back to Palo Alto, he called Futures Day “a phenomenal success” with “tremendous impact on senior management, managers and officers. Spouses [were] wide-eyed!” Pake, “1977 Xerox World Conference—What it Was,” handwritten note, XPA.
27. Paul A. Strassmann, The Computers Nobody Wanted: My Years with Xerox (New Canaan, CT: Information Economics Press, 2008): 122.
28. Phil Roybal, quoted in “Now the Office of Tomorrow,” Time, Nov. 17, 1980.
29. The spreadsheets VisiCalc and then Lotus 1-2-3 were among the bestselling business software titles of the early personal computer era. Datamation article (in footnote): Robert B. White, “A Prototype for the Automated Office,” Datamation, April 1977: 83–90.
30. In 1977, Pake wrote, “PARC is increasingly an object of envy and jealousy in Xerox. Morale of those who are fighting daily in the C/D [copier/duplicator] trenches has, at least in some cases suffered [due to] inadequate sensitivity in how to tell them the corporation’s future lies elsewhere.” George Pake, handwritten notes on 1977 Xerox World Conference, XPA.
31. Kearns and Nadler, Prophets in the Dark: 104.
32. Strassmann, The Computers Nobody Wanted: 113.
33. Dealer minutes, March 21, 1972, RWT.
34. Bob Taylor, performance review, 9/72–9/73, RWT; Stewart Brand, II Cybernetic Frontiers (New York: Random House, 1974): 88. Taylor’s boss, Jerry Elkind, was gone on a long-term assignment, and Taylor was acting as head of the lab when the magazine crew came by. Taylor says he assumed the Rolling Stone people had gotten permission to come to the lab from Elkind or someone else at the lab.
35. Bob Metcalfe, interview by author, May 22, 2014.
36. The CSL Activity Report for March 15–June 12, 1972, references Peter Deutsch’s volunteer work with Resource One. Kay’s library order: Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006): 124.
37. Chuck Thacker, interview by author, April 11, 2014.
38. Paul A. Strassmann, CBI interview. Computer Lib is also the title of a book published by Ted Nelson in 1974.
39. Kearns and Nadler, Prophets in the Dark.
1. Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2006): 184.
2. Ibid.: 186.
3. Ibid.: 180.
4. Ibid.: 196.
5. Outline for Apple Computer Buisness [sic] Plan, Nov. 18, 1976, ACM.
6. “I also designed the Apple I because I wanted to give it away for free to other people,” Wozniak wrote, explaining why he passed out copies of the machine’s schematics at Homebrew meetings. Wozniak and Smith, iWoz: 157.
7. Jobs worked at Atari from September 1974 through December 1975.
8. Mike Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
9. Markkula, interview by author, May 3, 2016.
10. Outline for Apple Buisness [sic] Plan, Nov. 18, 1976, ACM.
11. Stan Veit, “PC—History: Apple II” at http://www.pc-history.org/apple.htm.
12. Hambrecht profile in Robert Levering, Michael Katz, and Milton Moskowitz, The Computer Entrepreneurs: Who’s Making It Big and How in America’s Upstart Industry (New York: New American Library, 1984): 429.
13. Markkula, interview by author, May 3, 2016.
14. US Senator John Tunney, in “First Session of Surveillance Technology,” June 23 and Sept. 9 and 10, 1975, Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Special Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Commerce of the Committee on Commerce, U.S. Senate: 62.
15. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 21, 2012.
16. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
17. Ibid. Markkula said, “I was surprised that it had got me excited.” “Wozniak recalls that” (in footnote): Michael Moritz, Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World (New York: Overlook Press, 2010): 186.
18. The remaining shares were set aside for yet-to-be-hired employees. Confidential Private Placement memorandum, Nov. 18, 1977: 9, ACM; Apple IPO Prospectus: 25. “Big time” (in footnote): Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016. On Ron Wayne (in footnote): Ronald G. Wayne, Adventures of an Apple Founder (2010: 512k Entertainment): 64, 105-6; Atari Standards Drafting Manual, SB.
19. “Apple Computer (A),” Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, S-BP-229(A): 4.
20. Wendy Quiones, “Pioneering a Revolution: Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,” Boston Computer Update, July–August 1981.
21. Norman Sklarewitz, “A Used Volkswagen Van and a $500 Commission Were the Starting Capital for Apple Computer,” SF Executive, December 1979.
22. Scott, quoted in Michael Moritz, Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World (London: Overlook Press, 2010): 187.
23. The Sporck-Noyce comparison is Scott’s and one that Markkula, in interviews with the author, agreed was accurate. See Bruce Entin, “Can Apple Keep Its Piece of the Pie?,” San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 17, 1981.
24. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016. “Scott once said of Jobs” (in footnote): Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011): 83.
25. John Hall, interview by author, April 26, 2016. Markkula and Hall had met at a party, after which they occasionally played mixed-doubles tennis with their wives. The startup was a company called Educational Products that developed training materials (slides, workbooks, etc.). Hall says the company was “not very successful.”
26. Hall, interview by author, April 26, 2015, and emails from John Hall to author, April 28 and 29, 2016. Trip Hawkins quote (in footnote): interview by author, May 20, 2016.
27. Confidential Private Placement Memorandum, Nov. 18, 1977, Section II, ACM.
28. Confidential Private Placement Memorandum, June 30, 1979: 21, 27; “Apple Education Foundation Advances Learning Methods Through Microcomputers,” press release, Aug. 13, 1979; Apple Computer, Inc., Records, M1007, ser. 9, no. 6: 4, SUSC.
29. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016. Confidential document referenced (in footnote): Slides for Executive Briefing Tour, Sept. 1983, Apple Computer Inc. Records M1007, Series Administrative/organization (I) 6:9, SUSC.
30. The national legislation was known as the “Computer Education Contribution Act of 1982.” Rob Price, So Far: The First Ten Years of a Vision (Apple anniversary book, 1987); Apple Education Foundation Awards Microcomputer Systems to Northampton Educator” [press release], March 11, 1982; Apple Computer Inc. Records M1007, ser. 9, no. 6: 4, SUSC; Harry McCracken, “The Apple Story Is an Education Story: A Steve Jobs Triumph Missing from the Movie,” The Seventy Four, Oct. 26, 2015.
31. “He works for me and I work for him. How about that, folks? Do we care about who’s the CEO? All we care about is who’s going to do what,” Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016. See also Markkula, SUSG interview.
32. Markkula, SV; Gene Carter, Wow! What a Ride: A Quick Trip Through Early Semiconductor and Personal Computer Development (Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2016): 67.
33. Markkula, SV.
34. Markkula, quoted in Norman Sklarewitz, “Born to Grow,” Inc., April 1979.
35. Don [Kobrin] to Frank, Hal, Regis, Subject: Apple Computer Company, June 22, 1976, RM
36. The account executive was William Kelley. “Birth of an Industry, 1976–1977,” http://www.kelleyad.com/histry.htm.
37. “Who’s Apple,” Dec. 4, 1976, entry in Regis McKenna’s notebook, RM.
38. The designer was Rob Janoff. Holden Firth, “Unraveling the Tale Behind the Apple Logo,” CNN, Oct. 7, 2011, http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/06/opinion/apple-logo/.
39. William Kelley (account executive) to Steve Jobs, March 14, 1977.
40. West Coast Computer Faire brochure, http://www.digibarn.com/collections.
41. “Birth of an Industry, 1976–1977,” http://www.kelleyad.com/histry.htm.
42. Wozniak and Smith, iWoz: 201, 205. “The dress code is” (in footnote): Carter to Roybal et al., San Jose Computer Faire Booth Duty—March 2, 3, 4, 5 [1978], Apple Computer Collection, M1007, ser. 5, no. 2: 9, SUSC.
43. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine (New York: Basic Books, 1996): 247.
44. David H. Ahl, “The First West Coast Computer Faire,” Creative Computing (1977) at http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc3/showpage.php?page=100.
45. http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/These-Pictures-Of-Apple-s-First-Employees-Are-5096350.php.
46. Image of Markkula’s office at https://www.flickr.com/photos/munnecket/143884812/in/album-72057594130786050/. See also photos and office description at URL in note 45.
47. Gene Carter, interview by author, Jan. 7, 2016; Carter to author, March 9, 2016; Carter, Wow! What a Ride!
48. Markkula, SUSG interview.
49. Carter, interview by author, Jan. 7, 2016.
50. Price: So Far.
51. Carter, interview by author, Jan. 7, 2016. Though Carter’s title was originally director of dealer marketing, he and Markkula agree that the plan was always to have Carter run sales.
52. Confidential private offering memo, probably September 1977, ACM.
53. George Sollman, a former Shugart Associates executive, recalls demonstrating a floppy drive at a Homebrew meeting before Apple introduced its drive, but Wozniak says, “I had never been around or even used a floppy disk in my life.” Wozniak and Smith, iWoz: 211. Sollman story: see “The Floppy Disk,” http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/floppy/.
54. Gene Carter, Wow! What a Ride: A Quick Trip Through Early Semiconductor and Personal Computer Development (Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press, 2016): 63.
55. Wozniak and Smith, iWoz: 153; Kamradt, quoted in Moritz, Return to the Little Kingdom: 125. “One day he asked me” (in footnote): Gregg Williams and Rob Moore, “Guide to the Apple,” Byte, December 1984.
56. Williams and Moore, “Guide to the Apple.”
57. Paul Laughton, an engineer at Shepardson Microsystems who wrote the disk operating system, says, “When Woz showed me the designs of the disk controller hardware and software driver. I was truly amazed. At that time, all disk drive controllers were big cards with dozens of large- and small-scale integrated circuits. The design Woz created required only seven small-scale integrated circuits. What was even more amazing was that Woz’s design had significantly better performance (data density, reliability, cost) than existing controllers.” Paul Laughton, “Apple Computer: The Early Days, a Personal Perspective,” http://www.laughton.com/Apple/Apple.html. See also http://www.digibarn.com/collections/business-docs/apple-II-DOS/index.html and http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/apple-ii-dos-source-code/.
58. http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/apple-ii-dos-source-code/.
59. “The Floppy Disk,” http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/floppy/. Apple comparison (in footnote): Gene Carter to All Authorized Apple Dealers, July 29, 1978, Gene Carter Collection, M1009.
60. The TRS-80 disk drive system (two drives and a controller), for example, cost $1,297, whereas a similar Apple system cost $1,090. The Apple system provided 30 percent more capacity, 25 percent faster transfer rate, and a 250 percent improvement in access time.
61. Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
62. Carter, Wow! What a Ride: 64.
63. “Digitizing” (Talk of the Town), The New Yorker, Nov. 14, 1977.
64. Apple Computer Preliminary Confidential Offering Memorandum (probably September 1977): 20. The company was still considering, and would soon reject, an alternative approach to sell through department stores such as Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward.
65. Gene Carter to Mark Radcliffe, Nov. 7, 1988, GC.
66. Gene Carter to Authorized Apple Dealer, March 1, 1978; “AppleSOURCE: A Semi-Regular Newsletter for Apple Computer Dealers,” both in navy binder in Gene Carter Collection M1059, Box 2, SUSC.
67. William Bates, “Home Computers—So Near and Yet . . . ,” New York Times, Feb. 26, 1978.
68. V. I. Vyssotsky and Ed Feigenbaum, quoted in J. F. Traub, “Quo Vadimus: Computer Science in a Decade,” Communications of the ACM 24, no. 6 (June 1981).
69. Norman Sklarewitz, “Born to Grow,” Inc., April 1979. Before Apple was even a year old, it launched a study to estimate its order-processing needs over the next five years, hired consultants to identify the best hardware and software suppliers, and bought a system that would be able to meet the company’s needs up to the $500 million level. Almost from the beginning, Apple stored orders, credit files, and shipping records in databases.
70. “A module for the Apple II fills 30,000 square feet, requires a crew of 70, and produces between 450 and 500 units per day.” Apple Annual Report, 1981: 10. On Chris Espinosa and red book (in footnote): https://archive.org/details/applerefjan78.
71. “Blast from the Past—Floor Plan of Apple’s Original Bandley 1 Headquarters,” press release, http://www.cultofmac.com/128374/blast-from-the-past-floormap-of-apples-original-bandley-1-headquarters/; “Apple Computer Announces New International Headquarters,” Dec. 16, 1977.
72. Trip Hawkins, interview by author, May 20, 2016.
73. Apple Computer Preliminary Confidential Offering Memorandum (probably September 1977): 1, ACM. Andre Sousan, former vice president of engineering and board member at Commodore, ran the company’s European operations, called Eurapple.
74. Confidential Private Placement Memorandum, Nov. 18, 1977, ACM.
75. “Home and Non-Home Market for Personal Computers—Systems Selling at Less than $15,000,” Creative Strategies International, n.d., but clearly 1982, ACM.
76. Carole Kolker, “Venture Capital Greats: A Conversation with Peter O. Crisp,” Oct. 21, 2008, NVCA interview.
77. Between 1977 and 1980, Rock served on the board of another computer firm, Qantel. He waited until that company sold before joining the Apple board. Arthur Rock, interview by author, April 1, 2016; Rock to Markkula, March 7, 1978, AR.
78. Markkula, SV; Don Valentine, interview by author, Nov. 7, 2012.
79. Apple Computer Preliminary Confidential Offering Memorandum (probably September 1977): 2, 6, ACM. This was clearly a draft of the official memorandum issued later in the fall.
80. Ibid.: 22–4.
81. Ibid.
1. “The Electronics Outlook: Next Quarter, Next Year, Next Decade,” transcript of a talk Ben Rosen gave to the Wescon Annual Marketing Conference on Sept. 17, 1979, reprinted in Rosen’s Morgan Stanley Electronics Letter, Sept. 28, 1979. On Ben Rosen (in footnote): Philip Elmer-DeWitt,” Steve Jobs Through Rosen-Colored Glasses,” Fortune, 23 Oct. 2011.
2. Susan Benner, “Storm Clouds over Silicon Valley,” Inc., September 1982: 84.
3. Pamela G. Hollie, “Companies Compete to Lure Employees: California Computer Suppliers Trying Novel Incentive Plans,” New York Times, April 30, 1980.
4. Association of Bay Area Governments, “Silicon Valley and Beyond: High Technology Growth for the San Francisco Bay Area” (Working Papers on the Region’s Economy, no. 2): 1; “The Silicon Valley Economy,” FRBSF [Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco] Weekly Newsletter, no. 92-22 (May 29, 1992). (Jobs increased from 380,000 to 665,000.) Wells Fargo Bank, “Economic Forecast,” 17.
5. Marilyn Chase, “Electronics Firms in ‘Silicon Valley’ Start Exodus Due to Lack of ‘Roofs and Folks,’ ” Wall Street Journal, March 13, 1980; Susan Benner, “Storm Clouds over Silicon Valley,” Inc., September 1982. The classified page count is from 1979.
6. Marilyn Chase, “Venture Capitalists Rush In to Back Emerging High-Technology Firms,” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 1981.
7. Discussion and Comments on the Major Issues Facing Small Business, A Report of the Select Committee on Small Business, United States Senate to the Delegates of the White House Conference on Small Business, Dec. 4, 1979: 9.
8. “Big Is Powerless,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 8, 1981.
9. The commission had only seven members from private industry, so the high-technology industry was exceptionally well represented. Speaking at a venture capital luncheon, the governor proudly listed a dozen bills and resolutions designed to promote computer literacy, reduce state taxes on employee stock ownership plans, provide tax credits for donations of computers to schools, and improve job training in the “expanded industries.” Jerry Brown to Eugene Kleiner, Oct. 13, 1982, and “Status Report on the Recommendations of the California Commission on Industrial Innovation,” Oct. 12, 1982, both EKF.
10. A former spokesman for President Clinton who later worked at Uber and now runs a boutique public relations firm in Silicon Valley calls the Valley “an assisted living facility for political vets.” Former White House officials now work at Uber, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Square, and SpaceX. Matt McKenna, quoted in Michael Shear and Natasha Singer, “Next Job for Obama? Silicon Valley Is Hiring,” New York Times, Oct. 24, 2016.
11. Joan Chatfield-Taylor, “California Casual—Plus Hard Work,” San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 23, 1980.
1. “ ‘Astonishing’ Report on Gene Research,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 28, 1976; “Geneticists Spur Chemical Action in Living Cells,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 1976; “A ‘Triumph’ in Genetic Engineering,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 2, 1977; “The Bold Entrepreneurs of Gene Engineering,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 2, 1977; “A Commercial Debut for DNA Technology,” BusinessWeek, Dec. 12, 1977; “DNA: Industrial Research Grows,” New York Times, May 29, 1977; “One for the Gene Engineers,” Time, June 6, 1977; Jerry E. Bishop, “Gene-Splicing Field Is Swiftly Approaching the Commercial Stage,” Wall Street Journal, June 24, 1980. (In footnote) Information about large companies acquiring stakes in biotech firms: Marcella Rosene, “Why Corporations Back Entrepreneurs,” Venture, May 1980.
2. In 1999, Genentech paid an additional $200 million to the university, both parties agreeing that “this settlement is not an admission that Genentech infringed UC’s patent or used the genetic material in question.” http://www.gene.com/media/press-releases/4887/1999-11-19/university-of-california-and-genentech-s.
3. Bob Swanson, ROHO interview.
4. Fred Middleton, ROHO interview.
5. Brook Byers, interview by author, Oct. 8, 2015.
6. “Kleiner & Perkins, Venture Capital, and the Chairmanship of Genentech, 1976–1995,” oral history of Thomas J. Perkins, ROHO interview. Perkins had started a laser company that was acquired by Spectra-Physics, which H&Q took public.
7. Bill Hambrecht, ROHO interview. Hambrecht, profile in Robert Levering, Michael Katz, and Milton Moskowitz, The Computer Entrepreneurs: Who’s Making It Big and How in America’s Upstart Industry (New York: New American Library, 1984): 424.
8. Hambrecht, ROHO interview.
9. Levering, Katz, and Moskowitz, Computer Entrepreneurs: 424.
10. Hambrecht, ROHO interview.
11. Kathryn Christensen, “Hambrecht and Quist’s Underwriting Success Stems from Focus on High-Tech Firms,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 2, 1980. The four senior managing partners (Hambrecht, Quist, William Timken, and Roy L. Rogers), each owned 16 percent of H&Q; twelve general partners and thirteen limited partners owned the rest. In the mid-1970s, the firm had been in such trouble that both Hambrecht and Quist had mortgaged their homes to pay investors who wanted out. Hambrecht profile in Levering, Katz, and Moskowitz, The Computer Entrepreneurs.
12. Fred Middleton, ROHO interview.
13. Middleton, ROHO interview; Swanson, ROHO interview.
14. Middleton, ROHO interview.
15. Swanson, ROHO interview.
16. Byers, interview by author, Oct. 8, 2015.
17. Kathy Christensen, “Gene Splicers Develop a Product: New Breed of Scientist-Tycoons,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 24, 1980.
18. Sally Smith Hughes, Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011): 161.
19. Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History (New York: Scribner, 2016): 234.
20. Tom Perkins, ROHO interview.
21. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1980/. Stanford Medicine’s “Legacy of Innovation” site describes Berg’s work thus: “1972—Biochemist Paul Berg successfully combines the DNA of two different organisms.” The description of Cohen’s work: “1973—First Expression of a Foreign Gene Implanted in Bacteria by Recombinant DNA Methods,” http://med.stanford.edu/about/highlights.html.
22. Christensen, “Gene Splicers Develop a Product.”
23. Stan Cohen, ROHO interview.
24. Herb Boyer, quoted in Jane Gitschier, “Wonderful Life: An Interview with Herb Boyer,” PLOS Genetics, September 2009.
25. Cohen, interview by author, June 3, 2015.
26. Niels Reimers to Stan Cohen, Sept. 12, 1986, SUOTL.
27. Cohen, interview by author, June 3, 2015.
28. Niels Reimers to File, Dec. 2, 1980, SUOTL. “In March, Rowland” (in footnote): Reimers Memo to file, March 14, 1980; Reimers to Beyers, June 5, 1980, OTL
29. Robert Rosenzweig, vice president for public affairs at Stanford, quoted in “Genetic Engineering Could Pay Off for Stanford,” San Jose Mercury News, Dec. 1, 1980.
30. “Where Genetic Engineering Will Change Industry,” BusinessWeek, Oct. 22, 1979. The first recombinant DNA product, DNA ligase (an enzyme) from E. coli produced from a cloned gene, reached the market in 1975. Nicholas Wade, “Cloning Gold Rush Turns Basic Biology into Big Business,” Science, May 16, 1980.
31. Niels Reimers to William F. Massy, May 15, 1979, SUOTL.
32. Licensees were charged $10,000 per year until they had products, at which point they would switch to paying royalties that looked low (1 percent and as low as .5 percent for sales over $10 million) but would translate to high numbers for Stanford and the University of California if the licensees had profitable product sales. Royalties were calculated as a percentage of end products, which were the most valuable. Some companies paid royalty rates on other types of products (basic genetic products such as plasmids, process improvement products such as enzymes used for chemical manufacturing, and bulk products, such as a dipeptide sold as a sweetener to beverage companies), but those rates were higher than the rates for end products (10 percent, 10 percent, and 1–3 percent respectively).
33. Niels Reimers to William F. Massy, May 15, 1979; Niels Reimers to Donald Kennedy, Jerry Lieberman, and William F. Massy, Dec. 17, 1981; Niels Reimers to Stanley N. Cohen, Mike Hudnall, and Bertram Rowland, Sept. 14, 1978, all SUOTL.
34. Reimers to Roger Ditzel (UC patent administrator), Jan. 12, 1981; form letter dated June 25, 1981, SUOTL.
35. Andy Barnes, interview by author, March 18, 2015.
36. Advertisement text, June 25, 1981, SUOTL. Advertisements ran on July 31 in Science, August 3 in the Wall Street Journal, and August 6 in Nature.
37. Barnes, interview by author, March 18, 2015. Jeffrey Fox, “Genetic Engineering Industry Emerges,” Chemical and Engineering News, March 17, 1980.
38. Andy Barnes to File, Chicago/New York Trip—October 1–6, 1981, SUOTL.
39. Andy Barnes to File, European Trip—October 24 through November 7, 1981, SUOTL.
40. Barnes, interview by author, March 18, 2015.
41. Reimers, interview by author, May 15, 2015.
42. Niels Reimers to Donald Kennedy, Sept. 11, 1981, SUOTL.
43. Donald Kennedy to Kent Peterson, “End-Game on Cohen-Boyer,” Dec. 2, 1981, email printout, SUOTL. Peterson noted in another email in the chain, “Don [Kennedy] pounced on Niels during the Admin Council briefing on Monday on these points, so we knew he was concerned. . . . I think we will find out that the end game has been fairly well thought out, but I was surprised as well as Don by the amount of the litigation reserve that Niels thinks may be required.”
44. Even as Reimers hoped that he would not have to fight, he privately used a good bruiser nickname for the law firm he retained: he called the firm of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow & Garrett “Bruno, Boris, and Brunhilde.” The joking name was suggested by Charlie Lipsey, an attorney at the firm.
45. Kent Peterson to Niels Reimers and William F. Massy, Dec. 5, 1981, SUOTL.
46. Andy Barnes to Dorothy Bender, Sept. 28, 1981: “We need to have the file in the computer and ready for data input by December 1, 1981.”
47. Sally Hines, interview by author, May 13, 2015.
48. In their interviews with the author, both Reimers and Barnes recalled that, as Barnes put it, “At the eleventh hour, we were still sweating getting Genentech.”
49. Niels Reimers to Donald Kennedy, Jerry Lieberman, and William F. Massy, Dec. 17, 1981, SUOTL.
1. “Computers for People” brochure; “Atari Inc., Division of Warner Communications Inc., Enters Personal-Home Computer Industry,” WCI Press Release, Nov. 28, 1978, both SB.
2. Al Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 31, 2013.
3. “History of Atari,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOUxetHEn6Y&feature=fvwrel.
4. Mark Simon, “Folger Estate Up for Sale in Woodside,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 25, 1996.
5. Joe Keenan, quoted in Peter W. Bernstein, “Atari and the Video-Game Explosion,” Fortune, July 27, 1981.
6. Tekla E. Perry and Paul Wallich, “Design Case History: The Atari Video Computer System,” IEEE Spectrum, March 1983: 45–51.
7. Bernstein, “Atari and the Video-Game Explosion.”
8. Manny Gerard, interview by author, Jan. 23, 2012.
9. Angela Taylor, “A Busy Executive Who Didn’t Want to ‘Sit Around’ on Weekends,” New York Times, June 25, 1972. “Historical Information,” collection description in “Burlington Industries, Inc. Records, 1844–2001,” University of North Carolina Libraries, http://www2.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/b/Burlington_Industries,Inc.html.
10. At the same time that he began working with Atari, Kassar launched a textile import business.
11. Ray Kassar, quoted in Tristan Donovan, “The Replay Interviews: Ray Kassar,” April 29, 2011,” http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134733/the_replay_interviews_ray_kassar.php?page=3.
12. Nolan Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012.
13. Bushnell, quoted in John Hubner and William F. Kistner, “What Went Wrong at Atari,” InfoWorld 5, no. 49 (Dec. 5, 1983).
14. It is hard to track Atari’s spending on research and development after the acquisition, but the company spent 7.6 percent of revenues in 1974, 5.4 percent in 1975, and 4.2 percent in 1976. Atari mockup S-1.
15. Bushnell, quoted in Steve Fulton, “Atari: The Golden Years—A History, 1978–1981,” at http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3766/atari_the_golden_years__a_.php?print=1.
16. Kassar, quoted in Donovan, “The Replay Interviews: Ray Kassar.”
17. “History of Atari” video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOUxetHEn6Y&feature=fvwrel.
18. “Ray Kassar: Former CEO, Atari,” in Lucinda Watson, How They Achieved: Stories of Personal Achievement and Business Success (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001).
19. Bushnell says he wanted to lower the price for the unit that attaches to the television and increase the price of the cartridges. Bushnell, interview by author, Aug. 1, 2012. In the video “Stella at 20,” made for the twentieth anniversary of the VCS, Bushnell said that at the Warner budget meeting, he “was so convinced that the real way to take control of the business was to drastically drop the price of the unit” that he told the board that “the best and smartest thing we could do would be to take a 747 and airdrop the 2600 over greater Los Angeles with little parachutes, and we will be positive cash flow by that evening, and we will have absolute market dominance.”
20. “The pricing strategy [and] advertising and marketing plans, including the decision regarding the video pinball release, have all hurt the consumer division. I believe that all those Warner decisions have materially and wrongfully jeopardized my investment in my Atari debentures and my compensation under the bonus pool arrangement.” Nolan Bushnell to Manny Gerard, Jan. 26, 1979, MG.
21. Nolan Bushnell to Manny Gerard, Jan. 26, 1979.
22. “Commerce and Industry,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 1979.
23. Connie Bruck, Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner (Simon & Schuster, 1994): 168.
24. Gerard’s estimate may be high. A Harvard Business School case on Atari claims 67 percent gross margins. Activision’s gross margin in 1983 was 73 percent. Peter J. Coughlan and Debbie Freier, “Competitive Dynamics in Home Video Games (A): The Age of Atari”(HBS case); Activision S-1: 9.
25. Bruce Entin, “How a New York Textile Executive Rebuilt an Exciting, Red-Ink Stained Company,” San Jose Mercury News, March 15, 1981.
26. “Atari had more than an 80 percent share of the home game hardware and software market. Despite George Plimpton’s earnest commercials, Mattel’s Intellivision, the company’s nearest competitor, had only a 15 percent market share.” Hubner and Kistner, “What Went Wrong at Atari”: 157. 4 million game systems: Bruce Entin, “How a New York Textile Executive Rebuilt an Exciting, Red-Ink Stained Company,” San Jose Mercury News, March 15, 1981.
27. Steve Bloom, “Atari: From Cutoffs to Pinstripes,” http://www.atarimuseum.com/articles/10yranniversary/cut2pin.html.
28. Once upon Atari video, Episode 4.
29. Kent, Ultimate History: 186–7.
30. Howard Scott Warshaw, DigitPress interview, http://www.digitpress.com/library/interviews/interview_howard_scott_warshaw.html.
31. The VCS could access only 4 kilobytes of external ROM. A technique called bank switching, developed by Larry Wagner and first used by Tod Frye in the Asteroids cartridge, enabled the VCS to process 8-kilobyte games. Herman, Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Video Games (Rolenta Press, 1997): 56.
32. Carla Meninsky, interview by author, Nov. 3, 2011.
33. Once upon Atari video, episode 1.
34. Bruce Entin, “Ray Kassar and Atari: It’s All in the Game,” San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 27, 1982.
35. Howard Anderson, managing director of the Yankee Group management consulting firm, quoted in Sally O’Neil, “Researcher Sees Trouble for Atari: Competition, Management Could Make Firm Vulnerable,” Peninsula Times Tribune, Oct. 20, 1981.
36. Rob Fulop, quoted in Steve Fulton, “Atari: The Golden Years—A History, 1978–1981,” http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3766/atari_the_golden_years__a_.php?print=1.
37. Rich Moran, interview by author, May 28, 2015.
38. “Atari’s Struggle to Stay Ahead,” BusinessWeek, Sept. 13, 1982.
39. Stuart Hung, “In the Chair: David Crane,” Retro Gamer, 2010: 86–93. William H. Draper, III, The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership Between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011): 86.
40. Draper, The Startup Game: 87; Carol Shaw, interview at http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/800.
41. A third company to come directly out of Atari was the Learning Company, which was purchased by SoftKey International in 1995 for $600 million and then by Mattel in 1998 for $4.2 billion before being sold again for far less. Andrew Cave, “Mattel Sale Ends $3.6bn Fiasco,” Telegraph, Sept. 30, 2000.
42. Meninsky, interview by author, Nov. 3, 2011.
43. Atari released thirteen cartridges in 1978, twelve in 1979, and six in 1980, after the four key programmers left. “Atari 2600—Cartridges Released,” 1983, MG.
44. Bruce Entin, “How a New York Textile Executive Rebuilt an Exciting, Red-Ink Stained Company,” San Jose Mercury News, March 15, 1981.
45. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 31, 2013, Al Alcorn, email to author, Dec. 18, 2013.
46. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 31, 2013.
47. Roger Van Och, “Idea Killers,” 1979, photocopy in Alcorn Papers, SUSC.
48. The characters are C3-PO and Chewbacca. Victoria Woollaston, “Could Star Wars’ Holographic Chess Become a Reality?,” Daily Mail, Oct. 15, 2013.
49. Alcorn, CHM interview.
50. Alcorn, interview by author, Oct. 31, 2013.
51. “Consumer Electronics Show Focuses on Videodisc Marketing War,” AdWeek, Jan. 12, 1981.
52. Ibid.; “Atari Extends Gaming Offers,” CES Trade News Daily (newspaper of the Consumer Electronics Show), Jan. 9, 1981; Video News, Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 1981.
53. Al Alcorn, at http://retro.ign.com/articles/858/858351p1.html.
54. The Atari-Tel business plan is at http://www.atarimuseum.com/archives/pdf/misc/ataritel.pdf.
55. Al Alcorn, quoted in http://retro.ign.com/articles/858/858351p1.html
56. HP president John Young, quoted in “View from Silicon Valley: A Long Climb in the Quest for Special Tax Treatment,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 27, 1981.
57. Al Alcorn, memo to self, April 3, 1981, Alcorn Collection, memos folder, SUSC.
1. A mention of this meeting, held April 16, 1975, at the Peninsula School in Menlo Park, is at http://www.bambi.net/homebrew/gordon_notes.jpg.
2. Larry Tesler, interview by author, May 16, 2014.
3. Alan Kay, interview by author, May 20, 2014; Bill Pitts, interview by author, March 21, 2012.
4. Mark Seiden to author, Aug. 25, 2016.
5. “For those universities which are not well enough endowed with money to afford a variety of expensive machines, I think that the local computer store offers some very interesting options.” He suggested that underfunded academic departments “turn [graduate students] loose on available, inexpensive computing.” Taylor, quoted in J. F. Traub, “Quo Vadimus: Computer Science in a Decade,” Communications of the ACM 24, no. 6 (June 1981).
6. Apple Confidential Private Placement Memo, June 30, 1979: 25.
7. Trip Hawkins, interview by author, May 20, 2016.
8. Linda F. Runyan, “A Trial Balloon in D.C.,” Datamation, October 1979.
9. Alan Kay would have given the demo, had he not been on medical leave. The demos, which have taken on mythical status in the history of Silicon Valley, have been detailed and rehashed so many times that only the broadest outlines are necessary here. The best, most detailed account of the PARC/Apple demo is in Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
10. Roughly fifty Xerox stores carried Apple computers, along with the Xerox 820 and machines from Hewlett-Packard and Osborne, until July 1982, when the agreement between the parent companies expired. Scott Mace and Paul Freiberger, “Xerox Stores Take Aim at Retail Computer Market,” Info World, March 29, 1982; Jeff Brown, “Apples Picked off Shelves of Xerox Corp’s Retail Stores,” Info World, July 26, 1982; Bertil Nordin to Arthur Rock, 12 July 1982, AR.
11. The hiring of Tesler and others who joined him from PARC, combined with the knowledge that the graphical user interface and other features of the Alto were in fact doable, helped the Apple team figure out how to implement and go beyond those features in the Lisa and Macintosh.
12. Steve Lohr, “A Microsoft Pioneer Leaves to Strike Out on His Own,” New York Times, Sept. 17, 2002; “The World’s Billionaires: Charles Simonyi,” at http://www.forbes.com/profile/charles-simonyi/.
13. Chuck Geschke, interview by author, April 21, 2014.
14. Douglas K. Smith, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer (New York: iUniverse, 1999).
15. Though Gary Starkweather began working on the laser printer at Xerox’s Webster Research Center in Rochester, the work came to fruition only once he moved to PARC and began working with Butler Lampson and others on a digital control system and character generator.
16. Donald E. Knuth to David T. Kearns, Sept. 23, 1983, RWT.
17. Butler Lampson, interview by author, April 18, 2014.
18. Geschke, interview by author, April 21, 2014.
1. Arthur Rock, interview by author, April 4, 2016. It could not have hurt matters that Richard B. Fisher, the leading senior executive at Morgan Stanley (he would be named president in 1984) had been one of Bill Hambrecht’s closest friends since college (Hambrecht ROHO interview). In 1980, Markkula said that Apple had received “at least 20, maybe 30 calls” from investment banks offering to service the public offering. Philip Shenon, “Investment Climate Is Ripe for Offering by Apple Computer,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 20, 1980.
2. Don Valentine, interview by author, Nov. 7, 2012.
3. Apple sold directly to retailers in the United States and internationally via twenty-one distributors. International sales accounted for a quarter of Apple’s sales (by dollar value). Apple Computer Prospectus, Dec. 12, 1980: 11, 15, 20.
4. In 1981, Apple’s analysis indicated that games/entertainment software was most popular (with 86 percent of buyers having bought or planning to buy the software), followed by word processing (65 percent) and finance (63 percent). “Software for Apple II,” Gene Carter Collection, M1059, SUSC.
5. John Markoff, “Radio Shack: Set Apart from the Rest of the Field,” InfoWorld 5 (July 1982): 43.
6. Gene Carter, interview by author, Jan. 7, 2016.
7. John Hall, the consultant who helped write Apple’s business plan, was a controller at Intel when VisiCalc was in beta testing; his division was one of several beta sites within Intel, all of them running VisiCalc on Apple II machines. (One of the founders of VisiCalc’s parent company, Personal Software, had previously worked at Intel.)
8. Dan Flystra, “The Creation and Destruction of VisiCalc,” edesber.com/visicorp-history; Apple Computer Prospectus, Dec. 12, 1980: 13; Dan Bricklin of VisiCalc, quoted in Daniel Terdiman, “The Untold Story Behind Apple’s $13,000 Operating System,” http://www.cnet.com/news/the-untold-story-behind-apples-13000-operating-system/.
9. Anthony Hilton, “Drop-Out Duo Cash in $460m Chip,” Sunday Times, date unknown.
10. State regulators required a company’s book value to be at least 20 percent of its market value.
11. Robert J. Cole, “An ‘Orderly’ Debut for Apple,” New York Times, Dec. 13, 1980. Another 400,000 shares were sold by investors not in management at Apple.
12. Carter, interview by author, Jan. 7, 2016.
13. Joe Shelpela (Personnel) to Distribution, Sept. 25, 1980. Apple Computer M1007, ser. 2, no. 8: 21, SUSC. The three invited firms were Arthur Young & Co., The Portola Group, and Robert P. Martin Accountancy.
14. This is Jobs’s description of himself and other young tech entrepreneurs in 1985. See Jobs’s interview by David Sheff in Playboy, February 1985: “Playboy: It’s interesting that the computer field has made millionaires of— Jobs: Young maniacs, I know.”
15. “Apple Exec in Guarded Condition with Injuries from Plane Crash,” San Jose Mercury News, Feb. 9, 1981.
16. Gregg Williams and Rob Moore, “Guide to the Apple,” Byte, December 1984.
17. Harriet Stix, “A UC Berkeley Degree Is Now the Apple of Steve Wozniak’s Eye,” Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1986.
18. Marilyn Chase, “Technical Flaws Plague Apple’s New Computer,” Wall Street Journal, April 15, 1981. Apple III prices ranged from $4,300 to nearly $8,000, compared to the Apple II systems at about half the cost.
19. Apple fixed the problems and brought the Apple III back in late 1981—“Let me re-introduce myself,” one advertisement began—but not much software was written for the machine, and it was not anywhere near as popular as the Apple II. (Sales were around 1,000 per month versus the Apple II’s 15,000.) By one estimate (Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader [New York: Crown Business, 2015]: 72), before the Apple III was discontinued in 1984, only 120,000 had been sold. In the same period between the Apple III’s introduction and its demise, the company sold nearly 2 million Apple IIs. Andrew Pollack, “Next, a Computer on Every Desk,” New York Times, Aug. 23, 1981; Bruce Entin, “Can Apple Keep Its Piece of the Pie?,” San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 17, 1981.
20. The drop was from $285,000 in December 1980 to $170,000 in August 1981, though the annualized rate for the year was at $209,000. Ann Bowers to Executive Staff, Aug. 3, 1981, Apple Computer, M2007, ser. 2, no. 8: 32, SUSC.
21. Jean Richardson (advertising director), quoted in Michael Moritz, Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World (London: Overlook Press, 2010): 248.
22. “Apple Controls Animated Dragon at Studio,” Industry Week, July 6, 1981; John Schneidawind, “Oldest Profession Jumps into Newest Technology,” MIS Week, Aug. 12, 1981; Cinde Chorness, “Silicon Valley Clergyman Computes Their Wedding Vows,” Valley Journal, July 29, 1981.
23. Kathleen K. Wiegner, “Apple Loses Its Polish,” Forbes, April 13, 1981.
24. Marilyn Chase, “Apple Computer Takes a Bruising as Analysts Lower Earnings Estimates for Fourth Quarter,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 28, 1981.
25. So Far: The First Ten Years of a Vision (Apple 10th Anniversary Document, 1987): n.p.; “40 Workers Laid Off at Apple,” Peninsula Times Tribune, Feb. 26, 1981. The date of the firing was February 25.
26. Scott’s managerial style had always been forceful and confrontational, but according to Markkula, something changed at the end of 1980. “He was not himself,” Markkula says of Scott. Bowers will say only that after fielding complaints about Scott, she told Markkula that he “had to go.”
27. The computer became the employee’s after one year. Ann Bowers to All Apple Employees, Dec. 23, 1980, Apple Computer M2007, ser. 2, no. 8: 21, SUSC.
28. Dana Scott to [Exec team] Subject: Travel Policy, Jan. 28, 1981, Apple Computer M2007, ser. 2, no. 8: 32, SUSC.
29. Dana Scott to Ken Zerbe, Subject: Style, July 17, 1981, M1007, ser. 1, no. 5: 14, SUSC. This photocopy of Scott’s letter includes a note from Scott’s assistant JoAnn Burton Glock, indicating that she had typed it. (Scott did not respond to my requests for an interview.) See Bruce Entin, “Can Apple Keep Its Piece of the Pie?,” San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 17, 1981; Bruce Entin, “Why Three Top Electronics Execs Are Out of Work,” San Jose Mercury News, July 23, 1981; Bruce Entin, “For Mike Scott, Future Is a $60 Million Question,” San Jose Mercury News, April 24, 1981; “Ex-Chief Exits Apple,” Electronic News, July 27, 1981; “Apple’s First President Turns In Resignation,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 1981; Jay Yarow, “Interview with Apple’s First CEO, Mike Scott,” Business Insider, May 24, 2011; Scott to Zerbe, Subject: Style, July 17, 1981, M1007, ser. 1, no 5: 14, SUSC.
30. Bruce Entin, “For Mike Scott, Future Is a $60 Million Question,” San Jose Mercury News, April 24, 1981.
31. Yarow, “Interview with Apple’s First CEO.”
32. Trip Hawkins, interview by author, May 20, 2016.
33. Comment from stevewoz at http://www.cultofmac.com/96939/apples-first-ceo-says-young-steve-jobs-could-be-trusted-with-detail-but-not-with-a-staff/.
34. Ann Bowers, interview by author, Nov. 7, 2015.
35. “The overriding consideration was pride—Mike just wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of making Apple a huge success and fulfilling the implied commitment to the Apple employees.” Introductory remarks given by Arthur Rock at the Harvard Business School Entrepreneurial Award Dinner Honoring Steve Jobs and Mike Markkula, San Francisco Olympic Club, Feb. 3, 1983, AR.
36. Mike Markkula, interview by author, Feb. 24, 2016.
37. Steve Jobs, quoted in “Apple Shuffling Reflects Growth,” Computer Systems News, April 13, 1981.
38. Entin, “Can Apple Keep Its Piece of the Pie?”
39. Markkula, interview by author, May 3, 2016.
40. Trip Hawkins, quoted in Moritz, Return to the Little Kingdom: 217.
41. Ken Zerbe to Board of Directors, Aug. 21, 1979. Apple had two private offerings, one in 1977 and another in 1979.
42. Markkula called the process by which a customer develops a sense of a company’s character “imputing.” See, e.g., Jobs quoting Markkula when explaining why he wanted the Apple stores to be large, elegant, and centrally located. Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011): 370.
43. Jobs, quoted in Isaacson, Steve Jobs: 78.
44. Don Valentine, interview by author, Nov. 7, 2012.
45. Apple Annual Report, 1982.
46. Will Houde replaced Tom Whitney to run personal computers, Del Yocam was named corporate vice president of manufacturing, John Vennard was named vice president, peripherals, and Thomas Lawrence was named vice president of European operations. “Corporate V-P Chosen at Apple,” Electronic News, Sept. 7, 1981.
47. Markkula, interview by author, May 3, 2016.
48. Hawkins, interview by author, May 20, 2016.
49. Markkula, interview by author, May 3, 2016.
50. Markkula, CHM interview.
51. Larry Tesler and Chris Espinosa, “Origins of the Apple User Interface,” talk given Oct. 28, 1997, http://web.archive.org/web/20040511051426/http://computerhistory.org/events/lectures/appleint_10281997/appleint_xscript.shtml. Andy Hertzfeld recalls that Bill Atkinson, a member of the Lisa group, attended Mac group meetings. Hertzfeld, “Credit Where Due,” http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Credit_Where_Due.txt.
52. Regis McKenna, interview by author, April 11, 2000.
53. Hawkins, interview by author, May 20, 2016.
54. The full interview appears in Computers and People, July–August 1981: 8. The magazine was edited by the computer scientist and social activist Edmund C. Berkeley.
55. “When we invented the personal computer, we created a man-machine partnership” (advertisement), Wall Street Journal, Feb. 25, 1981.
56. Wendy Quiones, “Pioneering a Revolution: Apple’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,” Boston Computer Update, July–August 1981.
57. Jobs, quoted in Kay Mills, “The Third Wave: Whiz-Kids Make a Revolution in Computers,” Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1981. Ben Rosen’s comments referenced in the footnote appeared in the Sept. 28, 1979, edition of his widely read Electronics Newsletter.
58. Jobs, quoted in Mills, “The Third Wave.”
59. Ibid.
60. Sally O’Neil, “Apple Uses Dick Cavett for Its ‘Intelligent Pitch,’ ” Peninsula Times Tribune, July 22, 1981. This number seems reasonable, given that Apple’s Schedule X Supplementary Income Statement shows $6.4 million spent on advertising for the six months ended March 7, 1981—halfway through the fiscal year, which had begun in September 1980. Apple Computer M1007, ser. 5, no. 2: 18.
61. Apple Annual Report, 1981: 3.
62. “To Each His Own Computer,” Newsweek, Feb. 22, 1982.
63. “Potential Competition,” Confidential Private Placement Memorandum, Nov. 18, 1977.
64. Entin, “Can Apple Keep Its Piece of the Pie?”
65. George Anders, “IBM’s New Line Likely to Shake the Market for Personal Computers,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 13, 1981.
66. Entin, “Can Apple Keep Its Piece of the Pie?”
67. Advertisement in Byte magazine, January 1982.
68. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine (New York: Basic Books, 1996): 257.
69. Alice Rawsthorn, “The Clunky PC That Started It All,” New York Times, July 31, 2011; “Personal Computers: And the Winner Is IBM,” BusinessWeek, Oct. 3, 1983: 76.
70. David E. Sanger, “Philip Estridge Dies in Jet Crash; Guided IBM Personal Computer,” New York Times, Aug. 5, 1985.
71. “Macintosh vs. IBM PC at One Year,” InfoWorld, Jan. 14, 1985.
72. Markkula, CHM interview.
73. Otto Friedrich, “Machine of the Year: The Computer Moves In,” Time, Jan. 3, 1983.
74. Marilyn Chase, “Apple Computer Takes a Bruising as Analysts Lower Earnings Estimates for Fourth Quarter,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 28, 1981. The price dropped by 2⅛ to 14¼.
75. “Home and Non-Home Market for Personal Computers—Systems Selling at Less than $15,000,” Creative Strategies International, n.d., but clearly 1982, ACM.
76. 98 percent of the 82.37 million American households had televisions in 1981, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States.
77. Cary Pepper, “Putting a Finger on the Future: Personal Computers,” Town & Country, January 1982.
78. Entin, “Can Apple Keep Its Piece of the Pie?”
1. Jeff Smith, interview by author, May 19, 2015.
2. Fawn Alvarez Talbott, interview by author, July 24, 2013. Smith did not recall the particulars but agrees that there was a transition during which writing change orders moved from the engineers’ responsibility to a task performed by women in the department.
3. After an exhaustive search, Sarah Reis, Reference Librarian at Stanford University’s Robert Crown Law Library, was unable to find any statutory provision in the 1970s that forbade women from owning or acquiring shares in a risky company. Reis did find a number of peer-reviewed articles confirming that women were “viewed as inept or irrational investors” at the time. Sarah Reis to author, April 18, 2017.
4. Bob Maxfield, interview by author, Jan. 30, 2017.
5. John Young, quoted in Mark Blackburn, “Allure of Silicon Valley Fades,” New York Times, April 14, 1980.
6. Ibid.
1. Molly Upton, “HP 3000 Sales Exceeding Quota,” Computerworld, July 3, 1974; Upton, “Sales of 3000s Twice Those of Last Year, HP Reports,” Computerworld, Sept. 17, 1975; Hewlett-Packard, 1980 Annual Report: 9.
2. Shipping the source code also benefited ASK in later years. If the software had problems, ASK could dial into a customer’s computer and recompile the code immediately, logging the problem and bringing it back to R&D for a fix before the next release. Computer-savvy customers also appreciated that since MANMAN was written in FORTRAN, it would be easy to find coders to help maintain the product if ASK suddenly disappeared, a common fate of small software businesses in the late 1970s.
3. Sandra Kurtzig, CEO: Building a Four Hundred Million Dollar Company from the Ground Up (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991): 158.
4. Burt McMurtry, interview by author, Nov. 26, 2012; McMurtry, CHM interview. McMurtry credits investments in ROLM, NBI, Triad Systems, and KLA for his venture fund’s success.
5. The company was informally called by its original name, Cullinet. John Cullinane, CBI interview.
6. “Missing Computer Software,” BusinessWeek, Sept. 1, 1980, quoted in Martin Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2003): 2.
7. Gary Slutsker, “The New ‘Publishers’ in Computer Software,” Venture, September 1980: 79.
8. “Many of us had no idea what it meant to ‘go public.’ ” David V. Goeddel and Arthur D. Levinson, “Obituary: Robert A. Swanson (1947–99),” Nature 403 (Jan. 20, 2000): 264.
9. Burt McMurtry to author, Sept. 20, 2015.
10. Kurtzig, CEO: 187–8; McMurtry to author, Sept. 18, 2015.
11. Kurtzig, CEO: 188.
12. Betty Lehan Harragan, Games Mother Never Taught You: Corporate Gamesmanship for Women (Warner Books, 1978): 299, 310.
13. In CEO, Kurtzig says that the original IPO date was October 1980. But according to ASK’s S-1 filed with the SEC, the new board members Ken Oshman, Ron Braniff, and Tommy Unterberg, who joined in July 1980, did not receive stock grants until October, which makes it unlikely that October was the original IPO date, particularly given that a letter from L. F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin to Kurtzig dated May 7, 1980, proposed a March 1981 date (letter courtesy SK).
14. Kurtzig, CEO: 192. Although H&Q’s hybrid structure was unusual, it was not unique in 1981. Allen and Co. had a similar structure, and a few investment banks (Smith Barney Harris Upham & Co. and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, for example) had venture capital arms. Hambrecht notes that “there were a lot of people that thought that might be a conflict of interest,” but he and Quist believed that investing in a company before taking it public meant “you knew what you were dealing with” (Hambrecht, ROHO interview). Among those who worried the structure might lead to a conflict of interest was the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). As the vice president of NASD put it in 1981, “It can be hard to tell if something is a legitimate venture capital deal or a way of increasing underwriting fees.” Dennis Hensley, quoted in Dave Lindorff, “Investment Bankers Take the Venture Plunge,” Venture, January 1981.
15. Nancy Anderson (general manager, Computer Systems Division), quoted in Charles H. House and Raymond L. Price, The HP Phenomenon: Innovation and Business Transformation (Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2009): 212; HP 1980 Annual Report, Marty Browne communication, Sept.14, 2015.
16. Ken Oshman, quoted in Kurtzig, CEO: 200.
17. Sandra Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
18. Going Public—The IPO Reporter 1979, 1980. By year-end, 237 companies had gone public.
19. “High Technology: Wave of the Future or a Market Flash in the Pan?,” BusinessWeek, Nov. 10, 1980.
20. “Investment Advisers Give Clues on ‘Going Public,’ ” Peninsula Times Tribune, Dec. 5, 1980.
21. Tom Lavey, interview by author, Aug. 4, 2015.
22. ASK, 1984 Annual Report.
23. Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: 154.
24. Michael S. Malone, “Dangerous Woman Breaks Barriers,” San Jose Mercury News, March 6, 1979; Martha Reiner, “Top Computer Firm Began as Part-Time Work,” SF Business Journal, March 2, 1981; Joan A. Tharp, “The Entrepreneur,” The Executive SF, July 1981; “Raising Output Levels,” Informatics, Jan. 19, 1981; Computer Systems News, March 2, 1981; The Executive Woman, April–May 1980; “Women Rise as Entrepreneurs,” BusinessWeek, Feb. 25, 1980.
25. Tharp, “The Entrepreneur.”
26. Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
27. ASK S-1, Aug. 6, 1981.
28. Office expansion: Newsman [ASK newsletter], March 1981, MB. Kurtzig changed the name from ASK Computer Services to ASK Computer Systems.
29. Kurtzig, interview by author, June 23, 2015.
30. Marty Browne, CHM interview.
31. Browne, interview by author, July 12, 2015.
32. Kurtzig, CEO: 226.
33. The S&P closed the first week of January 1981 at 136.34 and the last week of September at 112.77. The NASDAQ saw a 14 percent drop over the same time.
34. Kurtzig had rejected private investment most recently in the spring of 1980, after her bankers suggested she do a private placement before the IPO. L. F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin to Kurtzig, May 7, 1980: Table 3, SK.
35. Vector Graphic went public on the NASDAQ, underwritten by Hambrecht & Quist, along with Shearson American Express, on Oct. 14, 1981. Benj Edwards to author, Sept. 30, 2015. For an excellent history of Vector Graphic, see Benj Edwards, “How Two Bored 1970s Housewives Helped Create the PC Industry,” Fast Company, http://www.fastcompany.com/3047428/how-two-bored-1970s-housewives-helped-create-the-pc-industry.
36. Kurtzig, CEO: 236–7. Kurtzig gave Liz Seckler, who had recently bought herself a watch, a bracelet.
37. Kurtzig, CEO: 113.
38. ASK S-1; quote in footnote: Sandy Kurtzig to author, August 11, 2017.
39. The attorney was Craig W. Johnson; the banker was Tommy Unterberg.
40. The equity structure had been with ASK since its earliest days. In 1976, for example, Kurtzig owned 2.5 million shares. Options on a total of 50,000 shares had been granted to the company’s other six employees. 1976 business plan: 23, SK.
41. Fox, quoted in House and Price, HP Phenomenon: 479. Details on HP’s stock option plans described in the footnote are from a spreadsheet, “Hewlett-Packard Company Stock Timeline,” provided by the company.
42. Chuck House to author, Oct. 5, 2015. Thanks also to John Minck, Jim Hall, Al Steiner, and Curt Gowan of the HP Alumni Association for their memories.
43. Sandra Kurtzig showed the author the photo.
44. Rankings of market value of entrepreneurs’ holdings at the time of their IPOs: “100 Who Made Millions in 1981,” Venture, April 1982.
45. Kurtzig, CEO: 251; Timothy C. Gartner, “Divorce Prompts Sale of ASK Computer Shares,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 7, 1982.
1. David Djean, “Westward Ha! A Visitor’s Guide to Silicon Valley,” PC-Computing, June 1989: 99.
2. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, “U.S. Business Capital Equipment Spending—Information Technology (IT) Spending vs. Non-IT Spending, 1960–2000,” Exhibit 7, Technology and Internet, April 5, 2001. The Wall Street Journal introduced its “Small Business” column and Forbes its “Up-and-Comers” section around that time. BusinessWeek began an “Information Processing” section and Fortune began featuring an “Entrepreneurs” slug. Andrew Feinberg, “Why Entrepreneurs Make Good Copy,” Venture, July 1982: 44.
3. Ronald Reagan, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union: January 25, 1983,” Papers of the Presidents: Administration of Ronald Reagan, 107. Reagan also established an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Task Force whose members included Bob Noyce, Spectra-Physics founder Herb Dwight, and Larry Sonsini’s law partner Mario Rosati.
4. This figure is for Santa Clara County only. Lenny Siegel, Testimony Prepared for the Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Technology of the House Committee on Science and Technology and the Task Force on Education and Employment of the House Budget Committee, June 16, 1983, 1100–1, PSC.
1. Hamilton [Bruce Hamilton, based in El Segundo, California], ES to StarArchInterest, StarOnTajo, “LISA in the Flesh,” May 3, 1983, RWT.
2. Taylor’s handwritten notes, probably from 1976, appended to a copy of T. George Harris, “The Religious War over Truths and Tools,” Psychology Today (January 1976), RWT.
3. Alan Kay, quoted in M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (New York: Viking, 2001): 437.
4. Harlan M. Averitt [PARC Personnel] to Bob Taylor, Aug. 24, 1982, RWT.
5. Graphs, “Source: E Steffensen 6/12/80,” courtesy Taylor.
6. Quote is from Taylor performance review, 2/1/80–2/1/81, RWT. Hiltzik mentions the five-year plan in Dealers, 354–5.
7. Bill Spencer, interview by author, May 1, 2014.
8. Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (New York: HarperCollins, 2000): 377–8.
9. Spencer, interview by author, May 1, 2014.
10. Bob Taylor, interview by author, March 18, 2013.
11. Spencer, interview by author, May 1, 2014.
12. Ibid.
13. “PARC Spin-Outs,” reflections by Bill Spencer, sent to the author May 1, 2014; Ralph R. Jacobs and Donald R. Scifres, “Recollections on the Founding of Spectra Diode Labs, Inc. (SDL, Inc.),” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 6, no. 6 (November–December 2000): 1228–30.
14. Spencer, interview by author, May 1, 2014.
15. Bill Spencer to Bob Taylor, “Management Counselling [sic] Session,” Aug. 22, 1983, RWT.
16. Jerry Elkind, interview by author, June 2, 2014. Elkind says that by the time he came to PARC, Taylor had already set the culture for the lab.
17. Bob Taylor to Bill Spencer, “Your memo of 22 August 83,” Aug. 28, 1983.
18. Spencer, interview by author, May 1, 2014.
19. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: 381–2.
20. Handwritten note, clipped to handwritten note from Spencer dated Sept. 19, 1983, that reads, “You are correct time is short today. Therefore, to reduce any overlap in what you and I tell CSL, I plan to attend your 10:30 meeting,” RWT.
21. Chuck Thacker to Bill Spencer, Sept. 19, 1983, RWT.
22. Spencer, interview by author, May 1, 2014
23. Spencer, interview by author, June 13, 2014.
24. The group included Mike Schroeder, “Mark, Bill, Severo, Paul, and Ed.” Mike Schroeder to CSL Only, Sept. 23, 1983, RWT.
25. Ibid.
26. Donald E. Knuth to David Kearns, Sept. 23, 1983, RWT.
27. Dana Scott to David Kearns, Oct. 4, 1983, RWT.
28. Richard Karp to David Kearns, Sept. 23, 1983, RWT.
29. Brian K. Reid to David Kearns, Sept. 26, 1983, RWT. Roger Needham at Cambridge University also wrote a letter of support.
30. J.C.R. Licklider to David Kearns, Sept. 28, 1983, RWT.
31. Spencer, interview by author, May 1, 2014.
32. Sam Fuller to Bob Taylor, Nov. 18, 1983, RWT. Fuller would go on to serve as chief scientist at DEC, CTO and vice president of research and development at Analog Devices, and a visiting scientist at MIT.
33. “A Parable of Rabbits,” n.d., unsigned, RWT.
34. By the end of 1984, former PARC employees at Digital’s Systems Research Center (DEC SRC) included Andrew Birrell, Marc Brown, Leo Guibas, Jim Horning, Steve Jeske, Butler Lampson, Roy Levin, Carol Peters, Phil Petit, Lyle Ramshaw, Paul Rovner, Mike Schroeder, Larry Stewart, Chuck Thacker, Mary-Claire van Leunen, and John Wick.
35. Citation as Fellow of the Royal Society; Crystal Lu, “The Genius: Mike Burrows’ Self-Effacing Journey Through Silicon Valley” at http://web.archive.org/web/20080217003150/http://www.stanford.edu/group/gpj/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=node/60.
1. Charles P. Alexander, “Video Games Go Crunch!,” Time, Oct. 17, 1983.
2. Steve Fulton, “Atari: The Golden Years—A History, 1978–1981,” http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3766/atari_the_golden_years_a_.php?print=1.
3. City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283 (1982), No. 80-1577, argued November 10, 1981, decided February 23, 1982, 455 U.S. 283.
4. Peter W. Bernstein, “Atari and the Video-Game Explosion,” Fortune, July 27, 1981; Lynn Langway et al., “Invasion of the Video Creatures,” Newsweek, Nov. 16, 1981.
5. Jonathan Greer, “Atari’s $310 Million Loss Breaks Record,” San Jose Mercury News, July 22, 1983.
6. Bruck, Master of the Game: 180.
7. “Atari 2600—Cartridges Released,” 1983, MG.
8. “Chase the Chuckwagon,” Steven L. Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon and Beyond . . . The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2010): 235; Custer’s Revenge, Leonard Herman, Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Home Video Games (Union, NJ : Rolenta Press, 1994): 75; Deborah Wise, “Video-Pornography Games Cause Protest,” InfoWorld, Nov. 8, 1982. Oklahoma City outlawed Custer’s Revenge.
9. Connie Bruck, Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner (Simon & Schuster, 1994): 181–3.
10. Laura Landro, “Warner’s Atari Is Trying to Regain Top Spot in Consumer Electronics,” Wall Street Journal, July 6, 1983; “Employees at Warner’s Atari Unit Turn Down Bid to Unionize Them,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 2, 1983.
11. Alexander, “Video Games Go Crunch.”
12. Trip Hawkins, quoted in Jeffrey Fleming, “We See Farther—A History of Electronic Arts,” www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130129/we_see_farther_a_history_of_.php?print=1.
13. Hawkins, quoted in Fleming, “We See Farther”; John Gaudiosi, “Madden: The $4 Billion Video Game Franchise,” CNN Money, Sept. 5, 2013, money.cnn.com/2013/09/05/technology/innovation/madden-25.
14. “Atari’s Struggle to Stay Ahead,” BusinessWeek, Sept. 13, 1982.
15. “Ted Hoff: Engineer’s Engineer,” Peninsula Times Tribune, March 29, 1983.
16. David E. Sanger, “Warner Sells Atari to Tramiel,” New York Times, July 3, 1984.
17. “Top 25 Videogame Consoles of All Time,” http://www.ign.com/top-25-consoles/1.html.
1. Kimberly Brown, “Proposal Would Simplify Bio-Tech Patent License,” Stanford Daily, March 30, 1983.
2. The $270 billion figure is as of 2013. Grand View Research, “Biotechnology Market Analysis by Technology,” September 2015, http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/biotechnology-market.
3. Hans U. D. Wiesendanger, “History and Operation of the Office of Technology Licensing, Stanford University, 1996”: n.p., Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing Records 1996–2007, SC729 ACCN 2016-037, SUSC.
4. Kennedy said that $11 million of the $60 million raised by Stanford in the previous year had come from corporations. He was also aware of the criticism that Harvard had faced in 1981 when it considered investing in a company founded by Professor Mark Ptashne. Harvard president Derek Bok ultimately decided not to make the investment. Donald Kennedy, Academic Duty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997): 256. Don Kennedy, “The University and Industry,” speech given to the Colorado Council of Deans Association, American Medical Colleges, March 30–31, 1981: 10, Donald Kennedy Personal Papers, SC708, Accn 2009-139, 2: 20, SUSC.
5. Kennedy, “The University and Industry”: 9.
6. Seth H. Lubove, “College Funds Taking Steps to Raise Yields,” New York Times, Aug. 10, 1983.
7. Kristen Christopher, “Stanford Tops Ranking in Technology Revenues,” Stanford Daily, Jan. 11, 1983.
8. “Taking Stock of Equity,” Stanford Technology Brainstorm, http://otl.stanford.edu/about/brainstorm/1203_equity.html.
9. https://web.archive.org/web/20080917185106/http://otl.stanford.edu/about/resources/equity.html. This page, from Sept. 17, 2008, is the last archiving of the Office of Technology Licensing’s “Partial List of Licensees Whose License Involved Equity.”
10. Lisa M. Krieger, “Stanford Earns $336 Million off Google Stock,” San Jose Mercury News, Dec. 1, 2005.
11. “Stanford held equity in 121 companies as a result of license agreements. For institutional conflict-of-interest reasons and insider trading concerns, the Stanford Management Company sells our public equities as soon as Stanford is allowed to liquidate rather than holding equity to maximize return,” Stanford Office of Technology Licensing Annual Report 2014–2015.
12. Ken Auletta, “Get Rich U.,” The New Yorker, April 30, 2012.
13. “Niels Reimers, Long-Time Director of Stanford’s Patent Office Resigns; OTL to Gross $24 Million This Year,” Stanford News Release, March 20, 1991, Stanford News Service.
14. Robert E. Alvarez and Albert Macovski, “X-Ray Spectral Decomposition Imaging System,” patent no. 4029963.
15. “OTL Financial Data 1970–2016,” KK.
1. Ann Magney Kieffaber, interview by author, Feb. 15, 2017.
2. Ibid.
3. Fawn Alvarez Talbott, interview by author, Feb. 17, 2017.
4. “IBM and ROLM Cope with Prenuptial Jitters,” BusinessWeek, Nov. 19, 1984.
5. Ron Raffensperger, interview by author, Feb. 4, 2017.
6. ROLM, 1984 Annual Report.
7. Thomas C. Hayes, “At ROLM, an Independent Style,” New York Times, Sept. 27, 1984; Joan A. Tharp, “M. Kenneth Oshman Tackles Telecommunications Goliaths,” The Executive SF, March 1982.
8. Raffensperger, interview by author, Feb. 4, 2017; Jeff Smith used almost identical language to describe his reaction to the acquisition.
9. Ann Magney Kieffaber, interview by author, Feb. 15, 2017.
10. Vineta Alvarez Eubank, interview by author, Feb. 14, 2017.
11. “IBM and ROLM Cope with Prenuptial Jitters,” BusinessWeek, Nov. 19, 1984.
12. Fawn Alvarez Talbott, interview by author, June 9, 2015.
13. Talbott, interview by author, July 24, 2013.
1. Friedrich, “Machine of the Year.”
2. Party description and quotes: Christopher Menkin, “Computer Reconnaissance,” Daily Commercial News, Feb. 23, 1983.
3. Sculley called his hiring as CEO a “big mistake” in an interview by Leander Kahney, Oct. 14, 2010, at http://www.cultofmac.com/63295/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full-interview-transcript/.
4. “Home Computers in a Slump,” graphic based on data from Software Access (Mountain View), n.d., but probably 1985. The graphic appears in Regis McKenna, “The Wisdom and Inspiration of Steve Jobs,” slide show shared with the author, RM.
5. Elizabeth Peer, “How to Work the Thing,” Newsweek, Feb. 22, 1982. The article appeared in an issue with a cover featuring the iconic Whistler’s Mother sitting at a personal computer.
6. “Personal Computers: And the Winner is IBM,” BusinessWeek, Oct. 3, 1983: 78.
7. “Apple will be a Fortune 500 company by 1985,” Markkula says in Susan A. Thomas, “Early Entry in Personal Computer Market Makes Sales Easy as Pie for Apple,” San Francisco Business Journal, Jan. 7, 1980.
8. Mike was “like a father, and I always cared for him.” Steve Jobs, quoted in Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011): 319.
1. ASK annual report, 1984. Ranking of fastest-growing companies (footnote) is from the Inc. 100 of May 1983.
2. Sandra Kurtzig, CEO: Building a Four Hundred Million Dollar Company from the Ground Up (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991): 244.
3. Tom Lavey, interview by author, Aug. 4, 2015.
4. Ibid. Compaq was funded by Ben Rosen, the technology-analyst-turned-venture-capitalist who also funded Electronic Arts.
5. Sandra Kurtzig, interview by author, June 24, 2015.
6. Ibid.
7. “30 Minutes” video and accompanying note, HK.
1. On the Facebook campus: “Facebook Campus Project,” City of Menlo Park, http://www.menlopark.org/643/Facebook-Campus-Project; Julie Bort, “A Tour of Facebook’s Disneyland-Inspired Campus,” Business Insider, Oct. 13, 2013; Alyson Shontell, “Why Sun’s Logo Is on Sign Outside Facebook’s Campus,” Business Insider, Dec. 7, 2014; Facebook farmers’ market: advertisement, Palo Alto Weekly, June 3, 2016.
2. “Sun Microsystems Inc. History,” http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/sun-microsystems-inc-history/.
3. Burt McMurtry, interview by author, Nov. 26, 2012.
4. “The real precursor for the Sun was the Xerox Alto,” says Andy Bechtolsheim, who worked as a “no-fee consultant” at PARC and who as a graduate student was assigned to build a computer based on the Alto but with off-the-shelf parts; quoted in John Markoff, “Even Sun Microsystems Had Its Roots at Xerox PARC,” New York Times, May 28, 2014.
5. The story of the Sun invention disclosure is a bit murky. Because Bechtolsheim was a Stanford student at the time he developed the Sun workstation, he filed a patent disclosure with the Office of Technology Licensing (Sun originally stood for Stanford University Network). He was granted all rights to the design after a review determined that it was only “marginally patentable” (whether that determination came from the Office of Technology Licensing or the Sponsored Projects Office is unclear). Sun did receive a patent on one aspect of Bechtolsheim’s design (high-speed memory and memory management system, filed July 2, 1982, granted July 2, 1985, patent no. 4527232). The Office of Technology Licensing, which learned about the patent only after it had been granted, negotiated an agreement with Sun “whereby Stanford would be provided sufficient rights only to be able to grant this license to the government.” Brenda Whitmarsh [Office of Technology Licensing] to Mr. Robin Simpson, Office of Naval Research. Oct. 4, 1988, KK. Bill Osborn, interview by author, May 14, 2015 (source of the phrase “marginally patentable”); Kathy Ku, interview by author; Niels Reimers, interview by author. The original disclosure is in Forest Baskett, Andreas Bechtolsheim, Bill Nowicki, and John Seamons, “The Sun Workstation: A Terminal System for the Stanford University Network,” March 30, 1980, KK.
6. Lavey, interview by author, Aug. 4, 2015.
7. Markoff, “Even Sun Microsystems Had Its Roots at Xerox PARC.”
8. “Von Bechtolsheim: I Invested in Google to Solve My Own Problem,” Deutsche Welle, http://www.dw.com/en/von-bechtolsheim-i-invested-in-google-to-solve-my-own-problem/a-4557608; “Andy Bechtolsheim: An Engineering Hero Talks Innovation, Success, and Engineering,” http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/sun-microsystems-inc-history/.
9. Silicon Valley Indicators, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, http://www.jointventure.org/images/stories/pdf/index2013.pdf.
10. See, e.g., David Dayen, “The Android Administration: Google’s Remarkably Close Relationship with the Obama White House,” The Intercept, April 22, 2016.
11. Statistics are for Santa Clara County. Data for 1980: 13.5 percent of SCC population was foreign-born, vs. 6.2 percent of US population as a whole (Nativity and Language for Counties [Table 172], 1980 Census). Today 12.9 percent of the US population is foreign-born. http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SantaClaraCounty50.htm.
12. “Components of Population Change,” Silicon Valley Indicators, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, http://siliconvalleyindicators.org/snapshot/. Joint Venture Index 2016 reports that nearly 74 percent of “computer and mathematical workers ages 25–44” are foreign-born.
13. Stuart Anderson, “Immigrants and Billion Dollar Startups,” NFAP Policy Brief, March 2016, National Foundation for American Policy, http://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Immigrants-and-Billion-Dollar-Startups.NFAP-Policy-Brief.March-2016.pdf.
1. Al Alcorn, CHM interview.
2. Zowie Intertainment was acquired by Lego in April 2000.
3. Martin Campbell-Kelly, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003): 223.
4. Ibid.: 156.
5. ASK’s tools and methodologies, developed for powerful machines with large memories, were ill suited to the personal computer market.
6. Steve Lohr, “Computer Associates to Buy ASK,” New York Times, May 20, 1994.
7. For more on Echelon’s start, see David Lane and Robert Maxfield, “Building a New Market System: Effective Action, Redirection and Generative Relationships,” in Complexity Perspectives in Innovation and Social Change, ed. D. Lane et al. (Berlin: Springer Science + Business Media, 2009): 263–88.
8. “History of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics,” https://www.scu.edu/ethics/about-the-center/history/.
9. Mike Markkula, CHM interview.
10. Betrayed: John Markoff, “An ‘Unknown’ Co-Founder Leaves After 20 Years of Glory and Turmoil,” New York Times, Sept. 1, 1997. Unethical: Markkula, interview by author, May 3, 2016.
11. “In some ways, he’s the John McEnroe of American capitalism: arrogant, self-centered, and too wealthy for his own good.” Robert J. Samuelson, “Steve Jobs and Apple Pie,” Newsweek, Oct. 7, 1985.
12. Markkula’s description of his internal reaction to Jobs’s request as “Whoopee! No problem at all!” Markkula, interview by author, May 3, 2016.
13. John Sculley, quoted in Regis McKenna’s notes on January 11, 1985, board meeting, reproduced in Regis McKenna, “ ‘The Journey Is the Reward’: My Thoughts on Steve Jobs and 35 Years of Being Inside/Outside Apple,” unpublished manuscript, revision of Jan. 29, 2012, RM.
14. Regis McKenna, notebook entry, n.d., but likely April 10 or 11, 1985, RM.
15. Steve Jobs, quoted in Regis McKenna’s notes on January 11, 1985, board meeting, reproduced in Regis McKenna, “ ‘The Journey Is the Reward’: My Thoughts on Steve Jobs and 35 Years of Being Inside/Outside Apple,” unpublished manuscript, revision of Jan. 29, 2012, RM.
16. Regis McKenna, “The Wisdom and Inspiration of Steve Jobs,” slide show shared with author, RM.
17. “OTL, Financial Data 1970–2016,” KK.
18. Dave Merrill, Blacki Migliozzi, and Susan Decker, “Billions at Stake in University Patent Fights,” Bloomberg.com, May 24, 2016.
19. Susan Decker, “Apple Told to Pay University $234 Million over Processor Patent,” Bloomberg Technology, Oct. 16, 2015, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-16/apple-told-to-pay-university-234-million-over-processor-patent.
20. Andrew Pollack, “Robert A. Swanson Dies at 52; Early Leader in Biotechnology,” New York Times, Dec. 8, 1999.
21. Ibid.
22. David V. Goeddel and Arthur D. Levinson, “Obituary: Robert A. Swanson (1947–99),” Nature 403 (Jan. 20, 2000): 264.
23. Andrew Pollack, “Roche Agrees to Buy Genentech,” New York Times, March 12, 2009.
24. Genentech had a 3-for-2 stock split in March 1983 and then 2-for-1 splits in 1986, 1987, 1999, 2000, and 2004. Roche paid $95 per share at the acquisition.
25. Bob Taylor to author, May 11, 2013. He pointed out that not only most awards but also the reward structure at universities is geared strictly to individuals. An individual gets tenure, for example, not a group or lab.
