Xerox creating a whole new ball game

Unlike athletes whose astronomical salaries form huge portions of the costs of operating a professional sports franchise, the team at Xerox Corp.'s Californian-based Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) are expected to achieve big results with relatively small resources.

According to PARC director John Seely Brown, the lab, which is the most famous of Xerox' four research centres, is only budgeted to receive one-third of one per cent of the company's total revenue.

"To everybody in the corporation except the CFO, we represent a round-off area."

In contrast to its financial status, Seely Brown said the PARC team is counted on to be star performers.

"Our job is basically to hit the home runs. And if you also have the bases loaded when you hit those home runs you win a few more games.

"Our job is to be out on the fringe -- to let the emergent happen. We are keenly aware of what is going on outside. We think of ourselves as almost the genetic variance that helps the species evolve. We're in the spirit of looking for the high risk and the ultra high value payoff."

The staff at the research centre, which created and then lost control of some of the most important advances in computing -- including the GUI, Ethernet, WYSIWYG editing, bit-mapped displays, distributed computing and client/server architecture, optical storage and the mouse -- is hoping at least one of its crop of rookie ideas will evolve into the next game-winner.

Digital paper

Of all the ideas that the PARC crew are willing to talk about, digital paper is the sexiest and easiest to market.

"Think of it as the world's first truly erasable paper," Seely Brown said. "You can print the day's news on yesterday's paper. The paper recycles itself."

Seely Brown said Xerox is finally solving some of the difficulties of getting digital paper to the commercial market. The "paper" is composed of thousands of randomly distributed bichromal microscopic balls. The balls measure about 100 microns in diameter -- approximately the same as a human hair -- and each is half black and half white, and is wrapped in a transparent rubber coating. The two sides carry opposite charges.

Writing on the paper is done when it is exposed to an electrical stimulus which sets the balls in place, with either their white side or their black side showing in order to produce the desired image. Reusing the paper requires subjecting the sheet to another charge. The rubber coating acts as a shield keeping the balls, which, depending upon the PARC official speaking, are either made of plastic or plant-based materials, safe from random electrical fields.

To date, Seely explained that producing the paper in large quantities has proved difficult and expensive, but that is being resolved. Recently Xerox took possession of the first large roll to be manufactured.

According to Matthew Howard, member of the PARC research staff and a development engineer, the world is likely to see its first commercial glimpse of digital paper within 36 months.

"The compelling market will be large area displays -- poster-sized signage with low information content."