Google's hidden secret to making data center's better, an Esprit de Corps commitment to Green Data Centers

Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure has a nice post on its Data Centers are more efficient than ever.

We’ll continue to deploy new technologies and share the lessons we learn in the process, design the most efficient data centers possible, and disclose data on our progress.

I saw this post last week and have had a bit of time to think what is there is more than most can see. There is a pattern of behavior that has been going on. 12 years ago in 2008 I had a chance to chat with Urs and wrote this post on uncloaking its ways of PUE.

What is nice about being Green, being more efficient, saving energy is it pulls together the team. The days of when someone would be wasteful are long gone. Being Green is an Esprit de Corps that unifies the team. The Google Data Center Team.

Definition of esprit de corps

: the common spirit existing in the members of a group and inspiring enthusiasm, devotion, and strong regard for the honor of the group

Getting an organization as large as Google’s data center group to work together for a common goal is a challenge if not impossible goal when you have a typical enterprise organization with multiple fiefdoms competing for their own self interests.

Google’s clear goal has results that the team can be proud of.

Our efforts have yielded promising results: Today, on average, a Google data center is twice as energy efficient as a typical enterprise data center. And compared with five years ago, we now deliver around seven times as much computing power with the same amount of electrical power. 

Without a great esprit de corps Google’s results would be no different than many other enterprises who are noticeably silent.

Washington Post completes the 3rd news obituary for Gary Starkweather

On the afternoon of Dec 26th I heard from Gary Starkweather’s wife Joyce that Gary had left us. She asked if I could share the news with Microsoft friends as I worked at the company when Gary was there and I was the one who got him to leave Apple for Microsoft. Given the holidays I knew that most would not be reading e-mail. After a few days I reached out through LinkedIn to a few in Microsoft who were at the company when Gary joined in 1997.

There was one post on LinkedIn my Michael Shamiyeh on Gary’s passing away. Otherwise there was no news. On Jan 2nd I started thinking about how to write about Gary’s life, and that is when I realized I had known Gary for 31 years. Searching for what to write I went back through what has been written on Gary. The Dealer’s of Lightning book on Xerox PARC has a whole chapter (#9) on Gary called “The Refuge.” Talking to Joyce Starkweather was helpful to review Gary’s life and it was nice to hear how she is doing and his family. Joyce gave me background on Gary’s discussion with Michael Shamiyeh and she pointed out how much time Gary had worked with Mike Sinclair. I told Joyce I would reach out to Michael and Mike and both have been helpful to capture Gary’s ideas he shared.

Gary’s service was going to be on Jan 8 and there was still no other news on Gary’s passing in any news sites. So I posted my tribute on this website on Jan 6 which was out there for a while with a few hundred visits and then I posted my tribute on news.ycombinator site and within days there were over 5,000 views. Which is nice but not enough.

Thanks to Michael Shamiyeh’s efforts to get the news out the WSJ and NYTimes were interested in writing obituaries and I was able to chat with both the writers to review Gary’s life and provide a plain English explanation of how a laser printer works. Both writers did an excellent job of summarizing Gary’s life and contribution.

And yesterday, Jan 16th the Washington Post put their obituary up on the web.

Gary Starkweather, inventor of the laser printer, dies at 81

By Matt Schudel Jan. 16, 2020 at 3:40 p.m. PST

Gary Starkweather, who defied his corporate boss to invent the laser printer, a revolutionary development that made it possible to print images and text directly from computer terminals in homes and offices, died Dec. 26 at a hospital in Orlando. He was 81.

Three weeks ago Gary left this earth and now there are memorials of Gary on the NYTimes, WSJ, and Washington Post. Oh and my blog post and Michael’s LInkedIn post.

But this is just the beginning of memorializing Gary’s work as Joyce has boxes of Gary’s work including his original log books from inventing the laser printer. People would always ask Gary to tell the story of inventing of the laser printer.

NYTimes posts on Gary Starkweather’s life and the invention of the laser printer

Cade Metz of the NYTimes posts a nice summary of Gary’s life and the invention of the laser printer.

The closing has a nice closing quote by Gary.

“A little work takes you a long way,” he said. “Even as technologists, when we think we are on the edge, we are not on the edge.”

Gary is now memorialized in the WSJ and the NYTimes with well written articles. These posts will soon rise to top Search Results for “Gary Starkweather” and “Inventor of Laser Printer.”

WSJ posts Gary Starkweather obituary, an optical expert who could see a better way of printing

WSJ has a Gary Starkweather obituary here. https://www.wsj.com/articles/gary-starkweather-invented-a-laser-printer-at-xerox-11579024691?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

This article does an excellent job of covering Gary’s life and his work.

This is one more step in memorializing Gary. There is more to come.

Mr. Starkweather recalled in an oral history produced by the Computer History Museum, “I couldn’t get this thing out of my head. I thought, ‘He’s wrong. This is so good that it’s got to work.’

Understanding the office environment when Gary Starkweather inventing the Laser Printer in 1967

There have been lots of compliments on the post written on Gary Starkweather here. I wrote the post a week ago and have reflecting more on what Gary inventing the laser printer in 1967.

With an M.S. in optics from the University of Rochester and after an 18-month stint at Bausch and Lomb, Starkweather went to work for Xerox, intrigued by the imaging technology the company was developing. One of his initial projects was the highspeed facsimile machine. Tasked with the challenge of getting enough light on the paper and getting the output device to create an image, he suggested using lasers, a new technology then. His idea worked.

Then one day in 1967, Starkweather was sitting in his lab looking at these big mainframe facsimile machines when he started thinking, “What if, instead of copying someone else’s original, which is what a facsimile does, we used a computer to generate the original?”

What was the technology of the office in 1967? Here is an article about the 12 vintage office devices from 1967 - Xerox Copier, Dictaphone, steel desks, carbon paper, samsonite briefcase, computer punch cards, hat racks, typewriters, intercoms, fancy lighters, and desk lamps. That is the office environment of 1967. Below is the 813 xerox copier.

The dominant office machine was the IBM selectric typewriter.

And there is Gary in his lab thinking of how to solve a copier problem and comes up with this. It is easier to see why there was so much resistance. This laser setup looked like it would not work. Would be expensive too.

But would Gary could see in the future is where component costs would head to. Below shows the first laser printer mechanism in production that cost $10,000 was eventually replaced by an assembly that cost $40.

Imagine Gary coming up with this invention when the office was dominated by IBM selectric typewriters, computer punch cards, Rolodexes, and Xerox copiers.

$10,000 laser assembly from first laser printers.

equivalent functionality laser mechanism from Canon that cost $40.