Free Dealers of Lightning by Michael Hiltzik Page A

of vacant research facilities to choose from. In a couple of days they visited thirteen empty locations before settling on one in a development known as Stanford Industrial Park. This was a compound of one- and two-story buildings occupying a parcel of land the cash-strapped university had decided to
    "He also acceded to Pake's repudiation of the designation "Advanced Scientific and Systems Lab," the name the lab bore in Goldman's original proposal, in favor of the bucolic-sounding "PARC." As Goldman acknowledged later, "The acronym of the for­mer would have invited ridicule." lease out to small businesses. It was located just beyond the campus boundary, in a dale surrounded by orchards and horse pastures where the grass had turned brown in the dry peninsular spring. Its main street, Porter Drive, meandered in gentle curves among the squat industrial buildings before disappearing over a low hill.
    About halfway down Porter stood a two-building complex that had been vacant since the Encyclopedia Britannica moved out a couple of years before. Facing the street was a cinderblock building windowless on two sides and with a concrete floor sturdy enough to support heavy lab equipment. Behind it was a somewhat larger structure that presented an exterior of floor-to-ceiling plate glass to the bright California sun. Trailing behind the rental agent, they stepped inside, disturbing a layer of dust and filth that seemed to have remained untrammeled since the begin­ ning of time. A musty stench pervaded the air. The floor, littered with pieces of crumbled ceiling tile, traced a large square around an interior courtyard adorned with one lonely olive tree. Squires and Jones contem­ plated the squalor, which was illuminated by a few dim rays of sunlight straggling in through streaks in the windows. The place needed work. But every other site they inspected would have needed more. And at a total of 25,000 square feet, the two buildings together were the roomiest they had seen. They gave the real estate agent a handshake deal and flew home to Rochester to pack up.
    In mid-May Jones returned with his wife and infant son as Pake's advance guard. He temporarily parked his family a mile or two from the site at Rickey's Hyatt House, a motel on El Camino Real that would serve as a transitional home for scores of PARC recruits over the next dozen years. After picking up the keys to his new workplace from the rental agent, he headed over to the property. As he coasted up the long driveway he could make out a stranger peering through one of the big windows.
    "Can I help you?" Jones asked.
    "I must be lost," the man replied. "Do you know where there's a Xerox research facility around here?"
    "You're at it," Jones said.
    "Really?" An expression of grave doubt passed over the stranger's face. He introduced himself as Frank Galeener, a newly graduated Ph.D. from Purdue who had been hired as a materials scientist in the new physics lab.
    "Oh, right, I recognize your name," Jones said. "But you're not sup­posed to start for a couple of weeks."
    "No ... I was in the area and thought I'd stop by and see what it looked like." He cast another anxious look through the window at the debris- strewn interior.
    "We're not set up just yet," Jones hastily reassured him. "But don't worry. It's going to be great."
    "Thank goodness," Galeener said. "For a minute there I thought I'd made a terrible mistake."
    Jones, Squires, and Gloria Warner, a senior secretary who relocated from Webster to work for Pake, spent the next week working like char­women. With brooms, buckets, and mops purchased from the nearest K Mart, they swept up the accumulated filth themselves and installed a rickety table and chairs in the clearing. A day or two later a man showed up from Pacific Bell to install the first telephone and a van arrived from Webster with a load of surplus oscilloscopes and other castoff equipment that Jones had redeemed from the Webster storage sheds. By the time Pake