In the middle of the 1980s while working in LA for a computer graphics company, I got my first outside computer consulting gig. Some guy wanted to make a kiosk that printed names on stickers in malls for kids birthday parties and such. But the printer had to be upside down and he wanted me to change the prom so it did that. It took a couple of weeks, but we disassembled it, burned eproms then poked around until it not only printed upside down but backwards (think about it). Now, the first meeting we had, he showed me the stickers on pin feed computer paper that were to be used. They were pretty cool and suggested he just sell the paper.

I never heard from the guy again and never saw one of their machines. But a year later I did notice his company now had stickers on pin feed paper in every computer store I went to for about 20 years - Lasting Impression Computer Associates - LICA had a hit albeit the low tech side of high tech I reckon.

The Xerox star was already over by then for all practical purposes, but not by much. My secretary's previous job was on the Xerox J-Star project.

At the time originally I had thought Xerox was just the name big machine that copies pages in school and didn't have purple junk or smelled like methanol.

When the Xerox Star computer came out out in 1981, a computer from a copier company seemed a little weird an bold and I while not everyone heard about it, those of us who where we curious about computers at the time did hear about it. IN my case I figured out it would end up being an interface on a copier but no more.

While the Xerox Star (and J-Star) computers come out in 1981 the previous, more or less R&D only computer the Star was based on - the Alto, was documented well as far back as the late 1970s. It, not the star is where the innovations of a blitter, bitmapped screen, ethernet, a GUI and the mouse came from. Years of a misspent youth in a university library in the formative years poring over IEEE-=ACM journals gave a pretty good vision of the future. But no price tag.

Time passes on, the Star is never seen in the wild and it's not like you can buy one for the home, we're not there yet, modulo the S-100 chassis still sitting in the closet at the time. Years pass, Sun Microsystems shows high speed bouncing Bezier curves on a giant bitmapped display via NewS, Apollo has it's domain operating system which out-Xeroxes xerox, the Amiga follows shortly and the Xerox Star concepts were starting to show up in things other than the mac, Apple of course took one look at the Star in Xerox' labs and the Steve's decided "we're building these, they're the future" - and they were right. But now the future came with a price tag. It's not like Xerox ever sold an alto and precious few Star computers.

We owe Xerox everything and yet we owe them nothing. I have noi idea what they do for money and how a company that clever can't get anything viable out the door at a time when half the garages of Palo Alto were successful at this. But are we expecting topop much from a copier company who only knows how to sell giant expensive boxes to high prices to businesses? Is this why Nvidia exists? For the folks who area a mega-Corp?

Who among us ever gave Xerox any money? Ever? Even if you hate this or that computer, live long enough, you'll have one or will in some way spend money on one. Not a Xerox. They're a copier company.

I do feel bad that I was never able to support Xerox in any way. I' m a fan. I have all their albums. I have friends from university that worked there, now retired. So much. Theory.

But I got my chance. I needed inkjet paper, decent stuff the generic staples stuff doesn't quite pass muster. And there on the shelf, there it was. Xerox brand paper. I figure since they invented all this stuff (afaik they made the first color sublimation engine) then they probably knew better than anybody else what the paper should be. So there, I finally gave money to xerox. Thank you copier people,