Who invented the personal computer?

Xerox Alto, with mouse and Rolodex, early seventies.

Who came up with the first personal computer?  The first graphic interface?  The first computer mouse?  The first ethernet network?  Was it Steve Jobs?  Bill Gates?  A team of  faceless Japanese engineers?  No, it was formerly Rochester, NY based Xerox Corporation.

In the sixties and seventies Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Company (PARC) invented just about everything you can imagine. That includes what was recognized as the first true PC – The Xerox Alto… This sucker had everything, Ethernet networking, graphical user interface, icons, bit mapping, scalable type, a mouse, the world’s first laser printer, hot and cold running water, a back scratcher (OK, just kidding on the last two.)

So why didn't we ever see Altos in every business, school, house, tent and mud hut aound the globe, like the more successful "micro computers?" we've come to know and love?  George Parker explains:

It was years ahead of its time. So what did Xerox management do with it? Not a god damn thing. They were too busy counting the money rolling in every time someone used a 914, ‘cos you couldn’t buy one, you had to lease it and pay for every copy you made. The thing was a gold mine for years until the patents finally ran out.

As everyone knows, the main beneficiary of all the incredible stuff coming out of PARC was Steve Jobs, ‘cos in its infinite wisdom, Xerox gave the King of Apple a conducted tour of PARC, showing him everything they were up to, even watching him as he made notes of everything he was shown. Within months he had hired away some of PARCS top talent and instituted a program that resulted in the Lisa, the forerunner of the Mac, which I worked on before most of you were born!

The "914" was an early Xerox office copy machine, which generated so much revenue that Xerox saw no reason to exploit its later invention.  Why, that sounds just like that another Rochester industrial giant, now bankrupt, which invented digital photography - Eastman Kodak.

Exciting cancer breakthrough

This sounds like goods news.

In a potential breakthrough in cancer research, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have genetically engineered patients' T cells — a type of white blood cell — to attack cancer cells in advanced cases of a common type of leukemia .

Two of the three patients who received doses of the designer T cells in a clinical trial have remained cancer-free for more than a year, the researchers said.

Experts not connected with the trial said the feat was important because it suggested that T cells could be tweaked to kill a range of cancers, including ones of the blood, breast and colon.

Future advances like this have been put at risk, of course, by the federal government's ongoing nationalization of healthcare.

Working at the pool

Harrison, on the job

One of our high school summer jobs involved a large, private swimming pool.  We arrived early, removed drowned wildlife from the pool filters, cleaned up the empties from the previous evening's goings on, topped off the chlorine tank, then jumped in the water and scrubbed the pool walls by hand.  Although we were usually out of there before the first sunbather hit a chaise lounge, we still remember it as a primo gig.

New York City high school kid Harrison Anastasio also has a summer job at a pool.  Harrison's position sounds like more fun:

By 11 a.m. on a recent sweltering Sunday, Harrison Anastasio had already collected the cellphone numbers of five bikini-clad women on the rooftop pool at the James New York Hotel.

“Don’t forget to text me,” one of the women whispered to the 17-year-old, flashing him a coy smile. Anastasio colored slightly beneath his Wayfarer sunglasses. But he wouldn’t forget. Though it sounds like the setup for a 1980s sex comedy, it’s his job.

Back then, we'd have offered that service, too.  Bikinis were widely available, but nobody had heard of cell phones.

Fracking threatend by new fuels?

If this works out, there may be little need for hydrofracking.  Per TigerHawk, a Massachusetts  startup called Joule Unlimited has developed on an organism that can produce liquid fuels on demand.  Great, but at what cost?  How about thirty bucks a barrel?

Joule says it now has “a library” of fossil-fuel organisms at work in its Massachusetts labs, each engineered to produce a different fuel. It has “proven the process,” has produced ethanol (for example) at a rate equivalent to 10,000 U.S. gallons an acre a year. It anticipates that this yield could hit 25,000 gallons an acre a year when scaled for commercial production, equivalent to roughly 800 barrels of crude an acre a year.

By way of comparison, Cornell University’s David Pimentel, an authority on ethanol, says that one acre of corn produces less than half as much energy, equivalent to only 328 barrels. If a few hundred barrels of crude sounds modest, recall that millions of acres of prime U.S. farmland are now used to make corn ethanol.

We expect the professional opposition to shale gas will soon rush to invest in Joule's venture.

South of 5 and 20 going mobile

South of 5 and 20 is now optimized for mobile devices.  Please use comments to let us know how we look on your high tech gadget.

Fill 'er up!

Could the answer to our decades long "energy crisis" be domestically produced coal, oil and natural gas?  A shocking hypothesis from Michael Lind in, of all places, Salon, is sure to get the left's hemp panties in a wad. 

What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?

As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in the last decade the technique of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," long used in the oil industry, has evolved to permit energy companies to access reserves of previously-unrecoverable “shale gas” or unconventional natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these advances mean there is at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today as there was a decade ago.

Natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal, can be used in both electricity generation and as a fuel for automobiles.

The implications for energy security are startling.

In Lind's view, the Finger Lakes' ubiquitous voluntary peasants may soon be sent to the political locker room for a long delayed shower.

The renewable energy movement is not the only campaign that will be marginalized in the future by the global abundance of fossil fuels produced by advancing technology. Champions of small-scale organic farming can no longer claim that shortages of fossil fuel feedstocks will force a return to pre-industrial agriculture.

Economy of scale

Can't find your Walkman?

If you can no longer locate that Walkman you you thought was in the attic, don't worry.  Although Sony has manufactured the portable cassette players since 1979, the run is now over.  However, stragglers can still get on board, as Sony will license Chinese manufacturers to carry on the tradition.