The Innovation Shelf


 The Innovation Shelf

Sitting next to my little collection of books on the fundamental constants of Euler's Identity (blogs on March 14 & November 3, 2021) are a group of books on significant technology innovations over the last half-century plus.

Instant: The story of Polaroid follows the development of instant photography and its meteoric success.  By 2001 Polaroid was bankrupt and the brand name sold off.

 
The other imaging technology business that fascinated me in my graduate school years was Xerox.  Copies in Seconds follows the story of xerography from Chester Carlson's innovation, Battelle, and Haloid which became Xerox.
 
Dealers in Lightning follows Xerox's break-out research at their Palo Alto Research Center, Xerox PARC.  Here they pioneered the basic elements of the modern computer including graphical user interface, the computer mouse, Ethernet, and more.  Xerox fumbled their opportunity and Steve Jobs snatched the ball and ran.  PARC has since been spun off from Xerox and is a contract research group.
 
The Idea Factory follows Bell Laboratories ("Bell Labs") the birthplace of the transistor, cell phones, assorted computer and software innovations, and more.  Their researchers were the recipients of  several Nobel Prizes.  Here again times have changed The current Bell Labs is Nokia Bell Labs, a unit of the Finnish company.
 
The Innovators is a sweeping overview of the evolution of modern computing and networking.
 
All five of these books are full of the human stories of the innovators - their personalities, quirks,  collaborations and feuds.   It was worth reading through aqll of them.

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