icedowl - 4:52 pm on Feb 24, 2010 (gmt 0)

xerox ... isn't that a printer company?! ;-)

Yes, but they've made much more than just printers although printers and copiers have been their bread and butter. I worked for them back in 1979/1980 using their mainframe computer, a Xerox Sigma7. They were also extremely proud of their optics that were used to get one of the first (if not the first) great photos of Jupiter. That photo was plastered all over the walls where I worked in Pasadena.

I honestly don't know what all they were experimenting with at that time or since, but they always had many new projects and inventions being developed and tested. And that was just at one of their many locations.