How Xerox Xeroxed Itself Out of the Future

In the early 1970s, Xerox invented the mouse, the GUI, Ethernet, WYSIWYG editing, and the laser printer, the entire back office of modern computing, then handed it to Apple like a garage sale nobody asked to happen. I am not making this up. The world's most successful photocopier company, a business whose entire mission in life was to make more paper copies of paper, accidentally built the operating instructions for the next fifty years of human civilization, and then treated those instructions the way most of us treat the instruction book that came with our new smartpone: glanced at once, then left in a drawer forever. This was supposed to be the story of David and Goliath. Except in this version, Goliath invites David over for coffee, shows him the blueprints for the slingshot, explains exactly how it works, walks him through a few practice throws, and then seems genuinely surprised later when things don't go well for Goliath. David didn't just win. David went home, built a slingshot factory, and became so enormous that the original Goliath is now, and I checked this, worth about as much as what David spends on cafeteria snacks in a rounding error. Let me tell you how a copier company casually invented your entire digital life, gave it away, and is still paying for it today, one keystroke, one click, and one rectangle of glowing glass at a time. 🔔 If you enjoy stories about obscure people who accidentally reshaped the world and then didn't get the memo about it, subscribe. This channel has already covered Elizabeth Magie (Monopoly), the Tom Thumb locomotive race, and Samuel Morse's telegraph, none of whom got the credit either. ____________________ SUBSCRIBE to the channel:    / @yaknowwhat-1701-a   ____________________ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 4:45 Building a New Kind of Lab 10:14 A Walk in the Parc 13:32 Show and Tell 7:57 How and Why They Gave it Away ____________________ The background music I used: Fanatic Rag (1911) Harry Austin Tierney - Ragnar Hellspong - RagsRag #TechHistory #Xerox #ApplePARC #XeroxPARC