Jacob (Jack) Goldman

(https://www.wired.com/2011/12/goldma/ ())

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company) ())

Thanks to his creativity, his ideas led to major changes in multiple industries. After working at Carnegie Tech University as chief of magnetics lab, Ford Motor Company hired Jacob Goldman to help make new kinds of cars. Eventually, within the company, "Goldman's team developed a prototype sodium sulfide battery, with the intention of using it to power cars" (Fulton). Helping develop the first electric car shows how he used his creativity to start the foundation of an alternate fuel source for cars and other modes of transportation. His ideas did have problems which allowed others to improve upon it quickly. After he worked for Ford, Xerox hired him to do something with the computer company they had acquired. "The result was Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) - the birthplace of the graphical user interface, Ethernet, the laser printer, and object-oriented programming"(McMillan). Thanks to him founding Xerox PARC, he was able to use his creativity to create all of these new things. With these new inventions, they put it all together to make the basis of the personal computer which they would share later on. He proved his creativity through these inventions which eventually led to today. He created all of these things but not without help and interactions with others.

(https://futureblind.com/2011/05/16/fumbling-the-fu ())

His generosity was shown after he made PARC and all of these world changing inventions and when he chose to share his ideas with others. When deciding on what this new research center would eventually become, they first had to set up the lab. After hiring physicist George Pake to help run PARC, he championed to keep the lab independent from the rest of the company. This is because he realised that working on the east coast would be better for developing new ideas in the lab and innovating freely (McMillan). To help out the people he worked with, he convinced the people he worked for to allow the lab to work a bit more separately. By doing this, he gave his co workers more freedom to be creative and try new things without worry. As their ideas started to take form, PARC peaked the interest of others. This lead to visits from many different companies that would either require this technology later on or capitalize on it. "In fact, Xerox earned the right to purchase 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock by giving Apple engineers three days' access to PARC. It was during those three days that the Lisa; and ultimately the Macintosh were born. Microsoft's Bill Gates was also a visitor to PARC" (Stein). After making these world changing products in 1970s, he gave other companies the chance to look at what they accomplished so that that can expand upon and capitalize on it more that they can. These companies eventually did use their ideas to make huge companies. These events helped show that although his creativity led to many new improvements, he was generous and shared these ideas with others who would spread the ideas further.

This was the engineer who used his creativity to create the technology that is used all around the world and was generous enough to have others work with these ideas to make it better. He worked at Ford Motor company to help start the process to make electric cars and then Xerox brought him into the company so that he would develop more technology. He founded PARC to do just that and made what became the personal computer. He then showed it to others so that they could make improvements and then make even more. Jacob Goldman is an inspiration to me because he was the first to use his creativity to give ideas like these form and allowed others to continue improving them. Ideas like the personal computer. He made the first personal computer and instead of keeping this to himself, he shared it with others so that they could improve upon what was there so that more people would experience their idea. Today we all have the ability to do more because of what he did and others like him. From his life, we can learn that we should find ways to express our creativity and use it to help others.

Works cited

Fulton, Scott. "Jack Goldman (1921 - 2011), Materials Scientist, IT Pioneer." ReadWrite, ReadWrite, 22 Dec. 2011, readwrite.com/2011/12/22/jack-goldman-1921-2011-mater/#. Accessed 4 May 2017.

McMillan, Robert. "Jack Goldman, Founder of Xerox PARC, Dies." Wired, Conde Nast, 22 Dec. 2011, www.wired.com/2011/12/goldma/. Accessed 1 May 2017. articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/25/local/la-me-jacob-goldman-20111225. Accessed 3 May 2017.

Stein, Jeffery D. "Mr. Jacob (Jack) Goldman." IT History Society, IT History Society, 6 Jan. 2016, www.ithistory.org/honor-roll/mr-jacob-jack-goldman. Accessed 4 May 2017.