Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here at
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, and you guys know I love tech
Speaker 1: And if you've listened to the last two episodes, then
Speaker 1: you are aware that we've been talking about the company Xerox,
Speaker 1: which is more than a hundred years old. It was
Speaker 1: founded in nineteen o six, and originally I thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be a two parter. Uh. I was certain
Speaker 1: that's as long as it was going to need to be,
Speaker 1: because I thought, even though there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that Xerox has contributed to technology, I could probably sum
Speaker 1: it up in two parts. But the interesting origin of
Speaker 1: Xbox ended up taking Xbox Xerox took up a lot
Speaker 1: of time, and the Xerox origin having so little to
Speaker 1: do with what Xerox does today. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: about photographic paper, uh, and if it would it would
Speaker 1: not even evolve into photo copy years until decades after
Speaker 1: its founding. But it was really interesting to hear about
Speaker 1: the different values that were instilled as part of the
Speaker 1: corporate character of Xerox. Then all that stuff about the
Speaker 1: Palo Alto Research Center or Xerox Park was also incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 1: I mean, Xerox Park is where a lot of development
Speaker 1: happened on things that are now standard in personal computers,
Speaker 1: but at the time it was all very much cutting
Speaker 1: edge technology. I mean, the park started in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: and they started working on things like graphic user interfaces,
Speaker 1: computer mouse, bitmapped icons, lots of stuff that would find
Speaker 1: its way into standard computer use more than a decade
Speaker 1: later was happening at Xerox at the time. And finally,
Speaker 1: as I was looking into more recent years at Xerox,
Speaker 1: I realized I couldn't just summarize what had happened. If
Speaker 1: I did, it would be short shrift and we'd be
Speaker 1: going bullet points, and that's not how I like to
Speaker 1: do this show. So I decided I needed to go
Speaker 1: into more detail. So that's where we are now, at
Speaker 1: the thrilling conclusion of the Xerox story. So so far, anyway,
Speaker 1: I mean, we gotta mention that's not really the conclusion.
Speaker 1: The company does still exist, although it has gone through
Speaker 1: some pretty major changes barely recently. So let's jump back
Speaker 1: into the main company of Xerox. In our last episode,
Speaker 1: we switched to focus on the Palo Alto Research Center
Speaker 1: once it was found in nineteen seventy. But what was
Speaker 1: going on back at Xerox Prime during that same time. Well,
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, everything was going pretty well
Speaker 1: over at Xerox. They had created the most profitable product
Speaker 1: of all time with the nine fourteen copier. Remember it
Speaker 1: was called the nine fourteen because those were the dimensions
Speaker 1: of paper it could accept. It could accept up to
Speaker 1: nine inches by fourteen inches, and us was a photo
Speaker 1: copier that could make copies much faster than alternative methods.
Speaker 1: It also was less messy than using something like carbon
Speaker 1: copies and a mimiograph machine. The company also held patents
Speaker 1: on the various technologies that went into photo copiers, so
Speaker 1: it gave them an effective monopoly on their specific approach.
Speaker 1: You know, if you patent a technology, no one else
Speaker 1: is allowed to create a technology that works that same
Speaker 1: way unless they first pay you a licensing fee. If
Speaker 1: you agree to license it, then sure they can do it,
Speaker 1: but otherwise you have exclusive rights to that technology until
Speaker 1: the patent expires, which is a little bit more than
Speaker 1: a decade. Well, the profit margin on those big enterprise machines.
Speaker 1: Enterprise being that they were selling these two companies right
Speaker 1: they were not selling nine fourteen copiers to the average consumer.
Speaker 1: They were selling them to big offices. The profit margin
Speaker 1: was super high, like in the seventy percent range of
Speaker 1: the money was pure profit. That means that they were
Speaker 1: able to sell the machines for more than what it
Speaker 1: costs for them to build them. And that's an incredible
Speaker 1: profit margin for any kind of technology. And that just
Speaker 1: means that they were really expensive machines and people were
Speaker 1: willing to pay for them because of the level of
Speaker 1: convenience they offered. But as Joe Wilson, who was one
Speaker 1: of the early leaders of Xerox, might have said, sitting
Speaker 1: back and relying on past innovations can only be effective
Speaker 1: for so long. The patents on xerox Is technology were
Speaker 1: close to expiring, so pretty soon anyone with the means
Speaker 1: could use those same approaches to make similar technologies. And
Speaker 1: that seventy profit margin, while it was great for Xerox
Speaker 1: right there at the moment, meant that other companies would
Speaker 1: have a chance to come in and cut prices. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're looking for a profit margin that's a lot more modest,
Speaker 1: and they could end up selling their copiers for far
Speaker 1: less than Xerox was and undercut the competition sition. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, Joe Wilson passed away. Now I mentioned
Speaker 1: that in the previous episode, so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: dwell on it here, but his passing was marked by
Speaker 1: public displays of respect across Rochester, New York, where he
Speaker 1: grew up, where he lived most of his life, and
Speaker 1: also within Xerox itself. Archie McCardell became the president of Xerox,
Speaker 1: while C. Peter McCullough remained the CEO. You remember McCullough
Speaker 1: took over for for Wilson. The mid seventies started to
Speaker 1: get a little more challenging for Xerox. First of all,
Speaker 1: you had other companies like Cannon and various copier companies
Speaker 1: in Japan entering the marketplace with competing products. Xerox still
Speaker 1: made up the majority of copiers in the marketplace. They
Speaker 1: were effectively a monopoly for the for several years, but
Speaker 1: they soon had to contend with these newcomers. Later, still,
Speaker 1: IBM would get into the copy of business, which was
Speaker 1: also a little bit foreboding to Xerox, and a few
Speaker 1: there's also started to kind of dip their toe into it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: companies like HP, we're working on technologies that would bring
Speaker 1: them into competition with Xerox in ways the copier company
Speaker 1: couldn't anticipate at the time, like in ink jet printing.
Speaker 1: In jet printing, while it's not the same thing as
Speaker 1: photo copying, did allow people to make copies of stuff
Speaker 1: by printing extra copies as opposed to printing one copy
Speaker 1: and then taking that to the photo copier to make
Speaker 1: more copies. HP took some of the need away from
Speaker 1: offices from having these giant photo copiers. So it was
Speaker 1: a level of competition that Xerox had not anticipated. Xerox
Speaker 1: began to see that incredible domination in the market start
Speaker 1: to lose ground. In fact, it began to lose ground
Speaker 1: pretty dramatically over the next several years. Now, in the
Speaker 1: last episode, I mentioned that Xerox Park was hard at
Speaker 1: work on several innovations, one of the biggest being the Alto. Now,
Speaker 1: this could have been the first personal computer on the market.
Speaker 1: The Xerox Alto could have been the ubiquitous or personal computer.
Speaker 1: It could have been there instead of the Apple Too,
Speaker 1: But uh, that just didn't work out, and why Well,
Speaker 1: the reasons are a little complicated. First of all, Xerox
Speaker 1: Alta was years ahead of other products like the Apple Too,
Speaker 1: because it actually did have a graphic user interface. It
Speaker 1: was essentially a Windows style machine, though Microsoft Windows did
Speaker 1: not exist yet, but it was that same sort of
Speaker 1: user interface that Microsoft Windows would be now. The fact
Speaker 1: that Xerox didn't see the opportunity in consumer personal computers
Speaker 1: led a lot of people after the fact to say
Speaker 1: that they really were lacking foresight and initiative, and that
Speaker 1: they weren't embracing that spirit of innovation the way Xerox
Speaker 1: had earlier in its in its existence, that's a lot
Speaker 1: easier to say in hindsight. At the time, it might
Speaker 1: have seemed weird to go into a consumer technology, which
Speaker 1: by definition tends to have much lower profit margins than
Speaker 1: doing these business to business deals which had made the
Speaker 1: company bookous of money's. Xerox ended up creating their first
Speaker 1: color copier, the Xerox hundred, around this time, so there
Speaker 1: was some still some innovation going on in their main business,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen seventy four, Xerox opened a new facility
Speaker 1: in Mississaugua, Ontario, Canada. And I know, I know Canadians,
Speaker 1: I know I mispronounced it. I I realized that I
Speaker 1: feel shame, a deep sense of shame and despair. But
Speaker 1: I'm just a simple man reading notes off my computer screen,
Speaker 1: so so give me some slack. This was the Xerox
Speaker 1: Research Center of Canada, also known as the x r
Speaker 1: c C. Initially the purpose of this research facility was
Speaker 1: to engineer new chemical processes and products for use in
Speaker 1: xerox is businesses. Today, the x r c C bills
Speaker 1: itself as quote Canada's leading materials research enter and home
Speaker 1: to a world class team of scientists and engineers with
Speaker 1: broad expertise and materials chemistry, formulation, design, prototyping, testing, and
Speaker 1: chemical process engineering end quote. They work both with Xerox
Speaker 1: and external customers, which typically would be other big companies.
Speaker 1: Now Xerox agreed to license copier patents to other companies,
Speaker 1: which seems really big of them, right like they were
Speaker 1: they had all these these different patents that kept them
Speaker 1: in this effective monopoly. Seems really generous to agree to
Speaker 1: extend licenses to various companies, you know, in exchange for
Speaker 1: a fee seems really nice. Well, it wasn't out of
Speaker 1: the kindness of xerox executive's hearts. Xerox had actually become
Speaker 1: the target for an antitrust lawsuit and the government was
Speaker 1: essentially demanding that the company offer up licensing agreements for
Speaker 1: their patents. So this was kind of the company's way
Speaker 1: of soothing things over. Within a short amount of time,
Speaker 1: the move did exactly what the people at Xerox were
Speaker 1: afraid would happen. It allowed competitors to leverage Xerox's technologies
Speaker 1: and so copiers for much lower prices. Xerox is near
Speaker 1: one market share would drop below twenty percent in just
Speaker 1: a couple of years. That's dramatic when you go from
Speaker 1: a percent market domination to less than twenty percent of
Speaker 1: the market in some cases, I've seen estimates between thirteen
Speaker 1: and fourteen percent. That's crazy. It is, however, something that
Speaker 1: we've seen in other technologies like smartphone operating systems. iOS
Speaker 1: dominated shortly for a while, and then Android caught up,
Speaker 1: and then now Android dominates just by sheer numbers. Was
Speaker 1: also the year that Xerox stopped trying to make mainframe
Speaker 1: style computers. They got out of that business. They had
Speaker 1: bought into it a few years earlier, and it turned
Speaker 1: out they just could not make that business work. Five
Speaker 1: was also the year Xerox launched an incredibly popular advertising campaign.
Speaker 1: This was called the brother Dominic campaign. It featured a
Speaker 1: monk creating an illustrated manuscript by hands, so he's writing
Speaker 1: out in calligraphy this manuscript, only to be told by
Speaker 1: his superiors that they need hundreds more copies. So the
Speaker 1: monk takes his illustrated page to the copy center in
Speaker 1: the monastery, since we all know that monasteries have these,
Speaker 1: right and he then goes and makes five hundred copies
Speaker 1: using a big Xerox machine. And when he returns to
Speaker 1: his superiors shortly after he was asked to make the
Speaker 1: copies in the first place, they look at the amount
Speaker 1: of work he has accomplished so quickly and reply, it's
Speaker 1: a miracle. Now. This campaign would include several more variations
Speaker 1: on this theme and would make a return just a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago with an updated technology found in
Speaker 1: Xerox document centers. So it's a very popular, award winning
Speaker 1: ad campaign. And again not just a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: they did an update that was kind of cute about
Speaker 1: how you could use Xerox technologies to do things like
Speaker 1: translate documents. It could have automatic detection of language and
Speaker 1: then translated into other languages and print it in those
Speaker 1: other languages, which is pretty cool thing. Actually, it seems
Speaker 1: kind of magical to me. I guess it is a miracle.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, Kodak, remember that was Xerox is
Speaker 1: old competitor from the old old days when it was
Speaker 1: the Halloyd Corporation. Kodak was the big boy in town
Speaker 1: and Halloyd was the teeny tiny little competitor. Well, now
Speaker 1: Kodak switches the the scales and becomes the smaller competitor
Speaker 1: in the copier game. That add more pressure onto Xerox.
Speaker 1: This was also the last year that Xerox sold a
Speaker 1: nine fourteen copier six. They phased it out of sales
Speaker 1: from that point forward, although they did still provide field
Speaker 1: service for nine fourteen copiers that had already been sold
Speaker 1: to customers. Zero made a move in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: to purchase Western Union International that ended up being a
Speaker 1: failed experiment. The company was trying to create a telecommunications network.
Speaker 1: They were really looking to diversify beyond photocopying, so they
Speaker 1: were they were definitely looking at ways that they could
Speaker 1: branch out so they weren't dependent upon a business that
Speaker 1: was getting siphoned away from them. But this telecommunications network
Speaker 1: experiment was a failure, and in nine Xerox would sell
Speaker 1: off Western Union International to m c I, and they
Speaker 1: took a loss on that sale, so it was an
Speaker 1: expensive lesson to learn. In nineteen eighties, Xerox formed an
Speaker 1: official environment, Health, and Safety organization and became one of
Speaker 1: the first big American companies to do so. The purpose
Speaker 1: of this group is to design and implement environmental and
Speaker 1: sustainability programs at Xerox. By Xerox had started to introduce
Speaker 1: the Star computer workstation, which was technically the first consumer
Speaker 1: computer to feature a mouse, and whizzy Wig software wasizz
Speaker 1: the Wagan case, you don't remember, stands for what you
Speaker 1: see is what you get, So you can actually edit
Speaker 1: within the framework of whatever document you're using, and it
Speaker 1: looks exactly the way it should when you print it
Speaker 1: or produce it. This is standard today, but back back
Speaker 1: then it was not standard. The thing that you were
Speaker 1: looking at on a screen often had very little relationship
Speaker 1: with whatever it would print out on a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: But this Star computer workstation was not compatible with other
Speaker 1: systems and was a bit underpowered all things considered, and
Speaker 1: ultimately it languished in the market. Apple computers would pass
Speaker 1: it by easily, even though they didn't have all the
Speaker 1: bells and whistles that the Star computer workstation did back
Speaker 1: in one. Apple would catch up by eight four when
Speaker 1: they started to incorporate the Mac operating system and had
Speaker 1: their Windows based user interface incorporated in that. But at
Speaker 1: the time Xerox's computer was was pretty advanced from a
Speaker 1: software perspective, hardware it was kind of lacking in McCullough
Speaker 1: stepped down as the CEO and David Kaarns became CEO
Speaker 1: of Xerox, and one thing Kairns did was to guide
Speaker 1: Xerox into some acquisitions to expand the company into financial services,
Speaker 1: including insurance. Eventually, this would become a huge burden to
Speaker 1: the company as it found itself financially obligated to resolve
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in insurance liabilities. So it became kind
Speaker 1: of an albatross around the metaphorical neck of Xerox. At
Speaker 1: this point, the revenues of the company were eight point
Speaker 1: five billion dollars. Xerox would continue to experiment with new products,
Speaker 1: including new copiers that had micro computers incorporated directly into
Speaker 1: the product that of course has continued up to present day.
Speaker 1: And it also had a low bandwidth ethernet as a
Speaker 1: communications interface built into these new copiers, which is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Xerox also produced a fax machine in nine
Speaker 1: that could be linked by network to other office equipment,
Speaker 1: So again they were producing some stuff that was ahead
Speaker 1: of the curve. But around this time Xerox also pioneer
Speaker 1: to practice that you might not be aware of. It's
Speaker 1: kind of creepy. So laser printing was becoming more commonplace
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties, and that included the capability
Speaker 1: to print in full color with certain types of printers.
Speaker 1: One concern that arose from this development of technology was
Speaker 1: the possibility of using that kind of printer to produce
Speaker 1: counterfeit documents and currency. If you could make it look
Speaker 1: convincing enough, you might be able to have a pretty
Speaker 1: convincing counterfeit and pass it off as the real thing. Now,
Speaker 1: Xerox determined that one way to protect against this, or
Speaker 1: at least track instances so that you could find their
Speaker 1: points of origin. Would be to include some sort of
Speaker 1: encoding strategy so that the printers being used would print
Speaker 1: a tracking information directly on to the paper and do
Speaker 1: it in such a way that it's not obvious. And
Speaker 1: thus tiny yellow dots began to find their way into
Speaker 1: print jobs. Now, those yellow dots, which are easiest to
Speaker 1: see if you shine a blue led light on the paper,
Speaker 1: encode specific information onto the paper itself. The information includes
Speaker 1: the serial number of the the printer, the date of printing,
Speaker 1: and more or the copier as well. So the dots
Speaker 1: are yellow and paper is typically white, and that means
Speaker 1: you have a very low contrast between the toner and
Speaker 1: the paper that makes it really tricky to spot. And
Speaker 1: the dots are actually pretty tiny, so it's likely you
Speaker 1: would not notice them without a magnifying glass and a
Speaker 1: blue light. But if you wanted, you could shine a
Speaker 1: blue light on a piece of paper that had gone
Speaker 1: through a Xerox printer or copier, you could use the
Speaker 1: magnifying glass, you could find these dots, and you could
Speaker 1: track any document back to the printer that produced it.
Speaker 1: You'd even know when the print job took place. The
Speaker 1: day would be included in that information, and that sort
Speaker 1: of information could be come in particularly handy during a
Speaker 1: case involving counterfeits. But it might creep you out to
Speaker 1: know that your print outs have been including information about you,
Speaker 1: or at least your printer all the way up to
Speaker 1: this point. This's, by the way, a standard practice. You
Speaker 1: can find lots of printers that will include stuff at
Speaker 1: a very tiny, unnoticeable level, at least unnoticeable to the
Speaker 1: naked eye, but they leave traces that make it much
Speaker 1: easier to figure where did that piece of paper come from,
Speaker 1: who printed it? Including it as a serial number, and
Speaker 1: the serial numbers registered to somebody, it makes it much
Speaker 1: easier to track down the origin of that piece of paper,
Speaker 1: at least the print out, not the paper itself. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of creepy in a way. It's also potentially useful. Now.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement, for their parts, say that they don't really
Speaker 1: use this unless they're looking into counterfeits. They're not necessarily
Speaker 1: taking every sheet of paper that has been printed it
Speaker 1: and then looking for these dots and then tracking it
Speaker 1: back to the original printer for further investigation. But still
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. Something I was not aware of before
Speaker 1: I started doing the research for this podcast, and we've
Speaker 1: got a lot more to say about Xerox to wrap
Speaker 1: up this story. But before I get into that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. In six
Speaker 1: years before the Worldwide Web with debut, Xerox made a
Speaker 1: very forward thinking move. The company registered a top level
Speaker 1: domain www. Dot xerox dot com. This was the seventh
Speaker 1: top level domain to be registered with the United States
Speaker 1: Department of Defense. Ever, so when you look at the
Speaker 1: top level domains, Xerox was the seventh one. And if
Speaker 1: you're wondering about that last statement about the Department of Defense,
Speaker 1: you need to listen up on the old ARPA net
Speaker 1: podcast past episodes I did. The Department of Defenses Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency or ARPA, which would eventually evolve into DARPA,
Speaker 1: was responsible for designing the foundation for what would become
Speaker 1: the Internet, So all the protocols, uh, they really got
Speaker 1: their start both in arpanet and over at xerox Park
Speaker 1: Xerox Park, they did a lot of work that would
Speaker 1: end up being incorporated into the fundamental design of the Internet.
Speaker 1: Before the Department of Defense essentially backed away from being
Speaker 1: the caretaker of the Internet. All registration ultimately went to
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense. So think about that, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to register at top level domain, you had to
Speaker 1: send that information to the Department of Defense. That's not
Speaker 1: intimidating at all. But Xerox got in early, well before
Speaker 1: any domain squatters could come along and mess things up.
Speaker 1: Xerox produced it's two millionth copier in nineteen The company
Speaker 1: was really starting to face fierce competition in the space.
Speaker 1: At this point, Xerox's main concentration remained the enterprise business. Uh,
Speaker 1: they kept on focusing on those big corporate clients as
Speaker 1: opposed to trying to really break into the consumer marketplace.
Speaker 1: In nineteen Xerox introduced docu Tech. That's a product that
Speaker 1: allowed for scanning, editing, filing, and printing jobs all from
Speaker 1: one product. So kind of like a a photo copier
Speaker 1: on steroids, right. It's the machine that just can do anything,
Speaker 1: the Swiss Army photo copier. That's also the year that
Speaker 1: Paul A Laire would become these Xerox CEO. Now A
Speaker 1: Laire had been with the company since nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: and it would be when he becomes CEO of the
Speaker 1: company his first moves as CEO were to divest Xerox
Speaker 1: of several of the financial services departments the company had
Speaker 1: formed in an effort to diversify like those insurance companies
Speaker 1: I was talking about. The revenue of the company at
Speaker 1: that point was thirteen point six billion dollars. Xerox Park. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Create did something kind of cool. It was called lamb
Speaker 1: Da Move, which you might think that means that Xerox
Speaker 1: was genetically producing Greek yogurt or something, But that's not
Speaker 1: what was going on, at least not that I know of. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Maybe they were doing that too, but that's not what
Speaker 1: Lambda move was. Lambda move was an early multi user
Speaker 1: object oriented online environment. MOVE stands for multi user object
Speaker 1: oriented or sometimes MUD object oriented. MUD, by the way,
Speaker 1: stands for a multi user dungeon. So it all it
Speaker 1: gets very recursive. Think of it as a text based
Speaker 1: environment that allows people to log into it remotely and
Speaker 1: interact with one another. It's a fancy type of chat
Speaker 1: room that has some added capabilities, like little spaces that
Speaker 1: you could define as channels or rooms of their own,
Speaker 1: as well as programmed objects within it that can sometimes
Speaker 1: produce effects based upon commands you would type in, but
Speaker 1: it's all text based. Was also when Xerox introduced the
Speaker 1: DocuTech Production Publisher, the first in its DocuTech series of products.
Speaker 1: It could make copies, manipulate documents, capture images, and more.
Speaker 1: Xerox was adding new features and development from the Park
Speaker 1: team in order to differentiate as products from all the
Speaker 1: copiers that were coming out from competing companies. So while
Speaker 1: other companies were selling copiers at lower cost, Xerox started
Speaker 1: producing some that had added features that you could not
Speaker 1: find in the competitors products. In three's Severe Tire Damage
Speaker 1: performs a live streaming show at Xerox Park, using the
Speaker 1: multicast backbone to send the performance over the Internet. I
Speaker 1: actually covered this in an episode of Tech Stuff not
Speaker 1: too long ago. I cannot, for the life of me,
Speaker 1: remember what the topic was, but I remember talking about
Speaker 1: severe tire Damage doing their live cast, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the fact that
Speaker 1: I've gotten to talk about severe tire damage twice in
Speaker 1: the same few months. It always seems like it was
Speaker 1: like a couple of weeks ago, but I know it
Speaker 1: was longer than that. Xerox underwent a little rebrand ding.
Speaker 1: The company would do this several times over the next
Speaker 1: couple of decades. They changed their corporate symbol from blue
Speaker 1: to red. It had been a blue Xerox, Now it
Speaker 1: was read, and the symbol itself was turned to a
Speaker 1: partially digitized X. The company also began to refer to
Speaker 1: itself as the Document Company dash Xerox. In nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: Kodak got out of the copy of business, so that
Speaker 1: helped a little bit. Xerox revenue hit seventeen point four billion,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen seven Zerox released the Document Center digital
Speaker 1: copier products. On June of nineteen seven, g Richard Toman
Speaker 1: left IBM to join Xerox. Now Toman was tapped to
Speaker 1: become the successor to Paul Alaire and would become president
Speaker 1: and CEO in nine seven. This marked the first time
Speaker 1: someone from outside Xerox assumed the role of president. On
Speaker 1: April one, nineteen ninety nine, he would be named CEO
Speaker 1: and a Laire would resign from being CEO. Remember, Xerox
Speaker 1: had this policy that when you hit sixty it was
Speaker 1: time for you to resign as CEO. It didn't matter
Speaker 1: what kind of job you were doing. That was the
Speaker 1: tradition that had been established, so if you hit sixty,
Speaker 1: it was time for you to get out. Now, a
Speaker 1: layer would step down a CEO, but he remained the
Speaker 1: chairman of the Board of Directors. You might think April
Speaker 1: one is a pretty tough day to get named to
Speaker 1: any position, and in this case, you're absolutely right, because
Speaker 1: it ended up being a not so funny joke on Tommin.
Speaker 1: Within thirteen months of assuming the role of CEO, he
Speaker 1: would be relieved of duty. Specifically, he would get the
Speaker 1: message from a layer that the board wanted Toman to
Speaker 1: resign from his position or be forcibly removed from it.
Speaker 1: In fact, some of the board members said either he
Speaker 1: goes or we go as and members of the board
Speaker 1: were threatening to resign unless Tomin was taken out of
Speaker 1: the office. So what the heck was happening? Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, to go back to nine nine seven, when
Speaker 1: Tomin became the president and CEO. That was a real
Speaker 1: tough year for Xerox. The leadership decided that they needed
Speaker 1: to do a massive reorganization and re prioritization, which directly
Speaker 1: translated into cutting jobs. In to the tune of nine
Speaker 1: thousand positions that represented about ten percent of Xerox's workforce,
Speaker 1: So just imagine going to work and seeing that one
Speaker 1: out of every ten of your co workers is gone.
Speaker 1: That did not help at all that Tomin was coming
Speaker 1: into this position, and also that Tomin was coming in
Speaker 1: from outside Xerox rather than rising up in the ranks.
Speaker 1: He didn't have the relationships that other Xerox executives had
Speaker 1: formed within the company. A lair who stayed on the
Speaker 1: board was kind of the opposite. He had been around
Speaker 1: since nineteen sixty six, and tom And encountered resistance when
Speaker 1: he went about to make changes. For one thing, he
Speaker 1: found it difficult to convince the board to hire the
Speaker 1: management team that he felt was necessary for him to
Speaker 1: get all the stuff he wanted done done. He was saying, well,
Speaker 1: I need the management team, but the boards blocking me
Speaker 1: on these moves. Now. A layer and several career Xerox
Speaker 1: employees felt that Tomin was really trying to change too
Speaker 1: much too quickly at the company and that he wasn't
Speaker 1: taking the time to form the right relationships at work.
Speaker 1: Tom And, for his part, was frustrated at running into
Speaker 1: resistance and at the thought of having to behave in
Speaker 1: a way that wasn't aligned with his leadership style. He
Speaker 1: also said later that he should have insisted a Layer
Speaker 1: step down from Xerox rather than stay on as chairman.
Speaker 1: According to Tom And, he and a Laire had reached
Speaker 1: an agreement by which a Laire could attend top management meetings,
Speaker 1: but only if he remained quiet. So a Laire did
Speaker 1: attend those meetings, and he did remain quiet. He didn't
Speaker 1: speak at them unless at all, but his presence alone
Speaker 1: was undermining Tommins authority, or at least seemed to at
Speaker 1: any rate, with top level executives at Xerox often looking
Speaker 1: at a Layer in response to questions rather than to Tom,
Speaker 1: who was the one who was actually supposedly leading the company.
Speaker 1: One month after tom And joined Xerox, the company stock
Speaker 1: price hit a historic high of nearly sixty four dollars
Speaker 1: per share. In the third quarter of the company posted
Speaker 1: an eleven percent drop an income, and investors sold off
Speaker 1: tons of shares, cutting the value of the company by
Speaker 1: nearly twenty five percent. Imagine the value of your company
Speaker 1: goes down an entire quarter. It's you know, one fourth
Speaker 1: of the value of your company is gone. It is
Speaker 1: very sobering By two thousand one, the price of the
Speaker 1: stock dropped down to seven dollars per share, and the
Speaker 1: amount of money that that represented collectively, if you multiplied
Speaker 1: all the different shares and you looked at the price,
Speaker 1: meant that the company lost thirty eight billion dollars. There
Speaker 1: was actually talked for a while of the possibility that
Speaker 1: Xerox might enter inter Chapter eleven bankruptcy. As it turned
Speaker 1: out that didn't become necessary, but it was flirting with
Speaker 1: that possibility for a while now. Part of the loss
Speaker 1: was due to Xerox's international operations. The company had significant
Speaker 1: holdings in Brazil, and Brazil was suffering from a catastrophic
Speaker 1: economic crisis in two thousand uh and due to Brazil's
Speaker 1: weak currency, it led to Xerox losing about a billion
Speaker 1: dollars of its net worth. Some people said that it
Speaker 1: was like Xerox was playing a game in in uh
Speaker 1: in converting currency from one form to the other, and
Speaker 1: it was losing. Around the same time, Xerox fired thirteen
Speaker 1: employees at its Mexican subsidiary on the grounds that they
Speaker 1: had allegedly cooked the books. According to Xerox, those employees
Speaker 1: conspired to make it seem as if the subsidiaries performance
Speaker 1: was far better than what it really was, So there
Speaker 1: was a lot of tension going on inside Xerox at
Speaker 1: this time. Tomin was essentially forced to step down and
Speaker 1: an MML Kahi, who had been with Xerox for twenty
Speaker 1: four years, was promoted to president and Chief operating Office.
Speaker 1: She stated that Xerox had an quote unsustainable business model
Speaker 1: end quote on an analysis call, but then she did
Speaker 1: her best backtrack after that and say that wasn't really
Speaker 1: what she meant, but it caused a lot of stir
Speaker 1: that she said that xerox Is business model was unsustainable.
Speaker 1: Moll Kay would lead the company to turn it around financially,
Speaker 1: so she actually was able to maneuver Xerox into making
Speaker 1: a profit again. By two thousand two, that was the case,
Speaker 1: Xerox was making a profit and more Okay, he would
Speaker 1: be both CEO and the chairman of the board of Xerox.
Speaker 1: Two thousand two was also the year that Park spun
Speaker 1: off as a wholly owned Xerox research company. It was
Speaker 1: no longer its own division within Xerox. In two thousand four,
Speaker 1: ten years after Xerox rebranded itself as the document company,
Speaker 1: Dash Xerox. The company had another rebranding and went back
Speaker 1: to being just Xerox in its corporate signature, so that
Speaker 1: that X disappeared and the new logo was just the
Speaker 1: word Xerox, but in all upper case letters. Xerox had
Speaker 1: a really big year in two thousand six. That had
Speaker 1: been a hundred years since the company's founding, so it
Speaker 1: was their centennial. Xerox also acquired a company called x Empie,
Speaker 1: which was a variable information software company, And you might
Speaker 1: wonder what that means. I did. I had no idea
Speaker 1: what a variable information software company did, so I went
Speaker 1: to x empi's web page and I read this. Here's
Speaker 1: a direct quote. X Empie, the leading provider of software
Speaker 1: of for across media variable data one to one marketing
Speaker 1: offers solutions to help businesses create and manage highly effective
Speaker 1: direct marketing and cross media campaigns. So I guess it's
Speaker 1: a marketing company. By the way, this that that isn't
Speaker 1: very good. That's not that's not a very good mission statement.
Speaker 1: It's not written very well. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: it repeats the word cross media. You get cross media
Speaker 1: twice in one and thence that's basic writing. One on
Speaker 1: one you don't use the same term twice, and it
Speaker 1: includes both the phrases one to one marketing and direct
Speaker 1: marketing in that same sentence, which are essentially the same thing.
Speaker 1: But hey, I'm just a writer, what do I know.
Speaker 1: Mostly I'm just giving marketing companies a hard time since
Speaker 1: I find that they like consultants frequently obvious skate what
Speaker 1: they really mean with fancy language, and I just used
Speaker 1: off u skate And ironically, in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: Ursula M. Burns would become the president of Xerox. Burns
Speaker 1: had actually started at Xerox in nineteen eighty as a
Speaker 1: mechanical engineering summer intern. She went from being an intern
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty all the way to becoming president of
Speaker 1: the company in two thousand and seven. Now, that is
Speaker 1: a Xerox story that was more in line with the
Speaker 1: corporate culture horizon. The company was was very much in
Speaker 1: line with those traditional values, and people are often promoted
Speaker 1: within the company at Xerox as opposed to being brought
Speaker 1: in from outside. And we'll talk a lot more about
Speaker 1: what Ursula and Burns did in her tenure as president
Speaker 1: and later CEO of Xerox, But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. In
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, just four years after they changed up
Speaker 1: the corporate signature, Xerox decided to do it again. This
Speaker 1: new version was still all in red, it was still
Speaker 1: the name Xerox, but now it was on lower case
Speaker 1: instead of upper case, and they also included a new image,
Speaker 1: a spherical red symbol with lines forming an X on it. More.
Speaker 1: Kay lead the company until two thousand nine, and that's
Speaker 1: when Ursula Burns would step in as CEO. She became
Speaker 1: the first African American woman to lead a company the
Speaker 1: scale of Xerox. That same year, Xerox announced its intent
Speaker 1: to acquire a company called Affiliated Computer Services. So that's
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Keep that in mind. This deal was
Speaker 1: massive is about six point four billion dollars in both
Speaker 1: cash and stocks. The acquisition became official in February two
Speaker 1: thou ten, and Zerox would later sell off part of
Speaker 1: Affiliate Computer Services, namely the i T outsourcing business to
Speaker 1: a toss for more than one billion dollars, but they
Speaker 1: held on to the rest of it, so they split
Speaker 1: off like a division of this company they acquired and
Speaker 1: sold it off because it was not it was not
Speaker 1: progressing as quickly as some of the other business units,
Speaker 1: and they didn't want to divide their attention too much. Now,
Speaker 1: the following years were pretty tough ones for the company.
Speaker 1: In January, Xerox issued a press release announcing that the
Speaker 1: company would split into two entities. Now this was largely
Speaker 1: because Carl Icon, one of the major investors in Xerox,
Speaker 1: had been urging Xerox to split into two publicly traded companies.
Speaker 1: One would become the document management business and would retain
Speaker 1: the name Xerox. The second business, which focused on business
Speaker 1: services and was mostly the businesses Xerox acquired when it
Speaker 1: bought Affiliated Computer Services back in two thousand nine, became
Speaker 1: known as Conduit Ursula Burns would step down as CEO
Speaker 1: after the split happened, although she remained chairman of Xerox.
Speaker 1: Jeff Jacobson would join Xerox to become the new CEO,
Speaker 1: or rather he would become the new CEO. He was
Speaker 1: already part of Xerox. He was a former lawyer who
Speaker 1: joined Xerox in at the officer level, so it's not
Speaker 1: like he worked his way up from the lowest levels
Speaker 1: to executive. He came in as an officer. He became
Speaker 1: the chief operating officer of Xerox Technology in fourteen, so
Speaker 1: just two years after joining the company, and then two
Speaker 1: years after that he became the CEO. Xerox is still
Speaker 1: very much in business. In the company announced a massive
Speaker 1: production launch of twenty nine new products, the biggest in
Speaker 1: its history. The company has focused more on network document management,
Speaker 1: including solutions that allow you to send print jobs for
Speaker 1: mobile devices and massive documents centers. Also, I should point
Speaker 1: out that there's still a lot of uncertainty about what's
Speaker 1: going to happen with Xerox over the next few months.
Speaker 1: There's some worry that there will be a lot of
Speaker 1: cost cutting measures, which often result in people losing their jobs.
Speaker 1: Their entire towns that are really worried about what could
Speaker 1: happen in the future because Xerox is the major employer
Speaker 1: at those those towns, and some cases you're talking about
Speaker 1: people who are now working for a totally different company
Speaker 1: in Conduit. So there's a lot of uncertainty at the
Speaker 1: time being. And before I conclude this series about Xerox,
Speaker 1: I need to talk a little bit about this idea
Speaker 1: of generic sized trademarks. So a trademark is a type
Speaker 1: of design, like a logo or a representation of a
Speaker 1: provider of goods and services that sets it apart from
Speaker 1: others in that same field. A trademark indicates that a
Speaker 1: particular product or asset belongs to a specific company that
Speaker 1: an official version of that asset. It means consumers know
Speaker 1: from whom their products originated. You can license trademarks to
Speaker 1: others if you want to. And let's say, for example,
Speaker 1: you create a popular character on a television showing to children.
Speaker 1: It's a puppet of some sort, and you've trademarked the
Speaker 1: image of that puppet. That puppet represents your work. You've
Speaker 1: trademarkedt so other people can't just go out and make
Speaker 1: a copy of it, at least not without becoming um
Speaker 1: liable for a terrible lawsuit. And you might have a
Speaker 1: toy manufacturing company being down your door to partner with
Speaker 1: you in order to produce toy versions of this trademarked character.
Speaker 1: You could choose the license the trademark character designed to
Speaker 1: that company and produce tons of toys and make wheelbarrows
Speaker 1: full of money. Lots of companies do this, But one
Speaker 1: thing that you have to do with a trademark is defended.
Speaker 1: So if someone else starts selling toys of your beloved
Speaker 1: character and you do nothing to stop them as and
Speaker 1: you don't sue the pants off of them, then your
Speaker 1: trademark is actually in danger. If a court finds that
Speaker 1: you had the opportunity to defend a trademark but you didn't,
Speaker 1: they might say, well, your trademarks not valid because you
Speaker 1: didn't actually defend it. So this is different from a copyright,
Speaker 1: which just stays there and you can sue anybody who
Speaker 1: infringes upon your copyright anytime during the duration of the
Speaker 1: copyrights legitimacy, which is a pretty long time in the
Speaker 1: United States thanks to companies like Disney. Trademark is a
Speaker 1: little different. You have to be very um aggressive in
Speaker 1: defending your trademark. Again, if you look at Disney, you've
Speaker 1: probably heard stories about the company telling, say, a school,
Speaker 1: that it had to take down a mural that had
Speaker 1: Disney characters on it because they were unlicensed versions of
Speaker 1: those characters. And while you might say, well, where's the
Speaker 1: harm in a small school putting up a mural of
Speaker 1: Disney characters. From Disney's perspective, the harm is that if
Speaker 1: they do not go forward and try to prevent people
Speaker 1: from using their trademarked intellectual property without without permission, then
Speaker 1: they lose They may lose the trademark protection in the
Speaker 1: first place, so they tend to be a little overzealous
Speaker 1: in protecting in order to make sure that doesn't happen. Um,
Speaker 1: if your trademark becomes invalid, you have no real legal
Speaker 1: protection to your expression and anyone can jump on it,
Speaker 1: potentially confusing the market. As a result, you could always
Speaker 1: try and take someone to court, but it depends on again,
Speaker 1: if you haven't been very good about defending your trademark,
Speaker 1: it's not It's not great news for you from the
Speaker 1: court's perspective. One thing you definitely do not want is
Speaker 1: a genericized trademark. Now, that's a brand name that becomes
Speaker 1: so synonymous with a type of product or service that
Speaker 1: people just use it for any instance of that product
Speaker 1: or service, even if it came from another company's products,
Speaker 1: which can obviously devalue the trademarked intellectu property. So if
Speaker 1: you were to say I'm gonna go xerox this document
Speaker 1: instead of I'm going to photocopy this document or scan
Speaker 1: this document or whatever you're using xeroxes trademark name in
Speaker 1: a way that's more generic, and you might be using
Speaker 1: a copying machine that isn't even made by Xerox. For
Speaker 1: crying out loud, you could say, oh, I need to
Speaker 1: go xerox this, and you're using a canon copier. Xerox
Speaker 1: is actually run awareness campaigns asking people not to use
Speaker 1: the word Xerox in this way. The company tried to
Speaker 1: appeal to the sympathy of the masses in these pieces,
Speaker 1: which are a little funny to read something that was
Speaker 1: not universally accepted as a serious message among all readers.
Speaker 1: After all, I mean, what does the average person care
Speaker 1: of a billion dollar company name becomes synonymous with the
Speaker 1: technology that at one time that same company had a
Speaker 1: monopoly over. Right, Once upon a time, you could probably
Speaker 1: call it xerox NG because Xerox was more or less
Speaker 1: the only game in town. And if there's no one competing,
Speaker 1: then there's not really much danger of the trademark being
Speaker 1: infringed upon. Now, officially, Xerox is not a generic trademark.
Speaker 1: It's not recognized as a generic trademark, unlike some other
Speaker 1: products like aspirin is a generic trademark. Now escalators, linoleum.
Speaker 1: All of those are generic trademarks, but Xerox is in
Speaker 1: a class of protected trademarks that are still sometimes used
Speaker 1: in generic fashion. So a couple of other examples in
Speaker 1: that category would be Kleenex or band aid. So these
Speaker 1: are all things that are technically protected trademarks, but people
Speaker 1: use them pretty casually, whether or not they're talking about
Speaker 1: the specific products or services, or they're just talking about
Speaker 1: something similar that, you know, out of convenience sake, we
Speaker 1: use a single brand name band Aid, I think is
Speaker 1: really a big one. Clean X too. Really, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know many people who say, hey, could you
Speaker 1: pass me a facial tissue or I would very much
Speaker 1: need an adhesive bandage to cover this gaping wound that
Speaker 1: has opened up on my hand. Ramsey. That's a hint. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. It's actually it's all right. I've I've
Speaker 1: got a I got I got an alley on my thumb.
Speaker 1: But it's okay at the moment. Now, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't need a facial tissue for my alley, Ramsey. Ramsey
Speaker 1: is trying to be helpful, but he's handing me. Wait,
Speaker 1: that's actually, that's actually puffs, So that's not clean x
Speaker 1: some sellotape Also Sellotape, by the way, also used to
Speaker 1: be an actual brand name, but now as a generic
Speaker 1: sized trademark, as I recall. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: take time to address that because it's one of those
Speaker 1: things people often think about when they hear the term
Speaker 1: xerox or or any of those other ones I was
Speaker 1: talking about, like, is that actually a generic trademark at
Speaker 1: this point? Can anyone use it? Technically? No, you cannot
Speaker 1: market anything as xerox unless you are the company Xerox.
Speaker 1: And while you might call something a Xerox, or you
Speaker 1: might refer to xerox seeing a document that is not
Speaker 1: technically correct, and of course that's the most important type
Speaker 1: of correct. We all live on the Internet. We know
Speaker 1: that to be technically correct means that you win. Well.
Speaker 1: That wraps up the story of Xerox so far, anyway,
Speaker 1: Like I said, pretty dramatic. You look at the humble
Speaker 1: beginnings of a tiny little company that was existing in
Speaker 1: the shadow of Kodak, to the Xerox Park days where
Speaker 1: incredible R and D work was going on that would
Speaker 1: shape our use of computers in the future. And yet
Speaker 1: the company was very much unable to capitalize on it,
Speaker 1: all the way up to the modern day where the
Speaker 1: company has recently split apart and people are still kind
Speaker 1: of wondering what's going to happen to it, And we'll
Speaker 1: keep our eyes on it. Maybe someday it will warrant
Speaker 1: a part four, a kind of a catching up on
Speaker 1: what has happened so far. But until that day, we're
Speaker 1: going to put this one to bed. Guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes of Tech Stuff, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a topic you've always wanted to know more about,
Speaker 1: whether it's a company or a person or a technology.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's someone you think I should interview, or you
Speaker 1: have an idea of someone that you really want to
Speaker 1: have on as a guest host. I know that I'm
Speaker 1: going to get Scott Benjamin in here pretty soon to
Speaker 1: be a guest host on an episode of Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about some personal submarines. That's the plan anyway,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna chat about that in a future episode
Speaker 1: not too long from now. But if there's anyone else
Speaker 1: that you think, hey, you need to get so and
Speaker 1: so in there, let me know, send me a message.
Speaker 1: The email addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop me a line on Twitter or
Speaker 1: Facebook handle it. Both of those is tech Stuff h
Speaker 1: s W. And remember you can always watch me record
Speaker 1: these shows live at twitch dot tv slash tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I record on Wednesdays and Fridays. Just go to twitch
Speaker 1: dot tv slash tech stuff. You'll see the schedule there.
Speaker 1: You can join in, be part of the chat room,
Speaker 1: watch me as I brilliantly make my way through my
Speaker 1: notes or sometimes stumble over my own words to hilarious effect,
Speaker 1: and you get to experience all of that before Ramsey
Speaker 1: goes in and does his magic and removes all the
Speaker 1: goof um ups and keeps all the good stuff, so
Speaker 1: you get to see the whole thing. I hope to
Speaker 1: see you guys there, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. YEA for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is a housetop works dot com