PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...

company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xerox, tasked with creating computer technology-related products and hardware systems. Xerox PARC has been at the heart of numerous revolutionary computer developments, including laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer, GUI ( graphical user interface) and desktop paradigm, object-oriented programming, ubiquitous computing, electronic paper, a-Si ( amorphous silicon) applications, the computer mouse, and VLSI (

very-large-scale integration Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) c ...

) for semiconductors. Unlike Xerox's existing research laboratory in Rochester, New York, which focused on refining and expanding the company's copier business, Goldman's “Advanced Scientific & Systems Laboratory” aimed to pioneer new technologies in advanced physics, materials science, and computer science applications. In 2002, Xerox spun off Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary.

History

In 1969, Goldman talked with George Pake, a physicist specializing in nuclear magnetic resonance and provost of Washington University in St. Louis, about starting a second research center for Xerox. On July 1, 1970, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center opened. Its 3,000-mile distance from Xerox headquarters in Rochester, New York, afforded scientists at the new lab great freedom to undertake their work, but it also increased the difficulty of persuading management of the promise of some of their greatest achievements. In its early years, PARC's West Coast location helped it hire many employees of the nearby SRI

Augmentation Research Center SRI International's Augmentation Research Center (ARC) was founded in the 1960s by electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing. The main product to come ...

(ARC) as that facility's funding began falling, from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA) and the U.S. Air Force. By leasing land at

Stanford Research Park Stanford Research Park (SRP) is a technology park established in 1951 as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. It has more than 150 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tesla Motors, TIBCO and VMware; previous ...

, it encouraged

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

graduate students to be involved in PARC research projects and PARC scientists to collaborate with academic seminars and projects. Much of PARC's early success in the computer field was under the leadership of its Computer Science Laboratory manager Bob Taylor, who guided the lab as associate manager from 1970 to 1977 and as manager from 1977 to 1983. Work at PARC since the early 1980s includes advances in ubiquitous computing, aspect-oriented programming, and IPv6. After three decades as a division of Xerox, PARC was transformed in 2002 into an independent, wholly owned subsidiary company dedicated to developing and maturing advances in science and business concepts.

Accomplishments

PARC's developments in information technology served for a long time as standards for much of the computing industry. Many advances were not equalled or surpassed for two decades, enormous timespans in the fast-paced high-tech world. Xerox PARC has been the inventor and incubator of many elements of modern computing: * Laser printers *Computer-generated bitmap graphics *The graphical user interface, featuring

skeuomorphic A skeuomorph (also spelled skiamorph, ) is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort t ...

windows and icons, operated with a

mouse A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

*The WYSIWYG text editor * Interpress, a resolution-independent graphical page-description language and the precursor to

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

* Ethernet as a local-area computer network *Fully formed object-oriented programming (OOP) (with

class-based Class-based programming, or more commonly class-orientation, is a style of object-oriented programming (OOP) in which inheritance (object-oriented programming), inheritance occurs via defining ''class (computer programming), classes'' of object ...

inheritance, the most popular OOP model to this day) in the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Ka ...

programming language and integrated development environment * Prototype-based programming (the second most popular inheritance model in OOP) in the Self programming language *

Model–view–controller Model–view–controller (MVC) is a software architectural pattern commonly used for developing user interfaces that divide the related program logic into three interconnected elements. This is done to separate internal representations of infor ...

software architecture * AspectJ, an aspect-oriented programming (AOP) extension for the Java programming language

The Alto

Most of these developments were included in the Alto, which added the now familiar Stanford Research Institute (SRI) developed

,Xerox PARC was the first research group to widely adopt the mouse invented by

Douglas Engelbart Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularly ...

at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in Menlo Park, California. unifying into a single model most aspects of now-standard personal computer use. The integration of Ethernet prompted the development of the PARC Universal Packet architecture, much like today's Internet.

The GUI

Xerox has been heavily criticized (particularly by business historians) for failing to properly commercialize and profitably exploit PARC's innovations. A favorite example is the graphical user interface (GUI), initially developed at PARC for the Alto and then sold as the Xerox Star by the Xerox Systems Development Department. It heavily influenced future system design, but is deemed a failure because it only sold about 25,000 units. A small group from PARC led by

David Liddle David Liddle is co-founder of Interval Research Corporation, consulting professor of computer science at Stanford University. While at Xerox PARC he was credited with heading development of the Xerox Star computer system. In 1982 he co-founded Meta ...

and

Charles Irby Charles H. Irby was a software architect on SRI International's oN-Line System (NLS), where he worked to establish many of the user interface standards that exist today. He also led the design group for the Xerox Star. He co-founded Metaphor Com ...

formed

Metaphor Computer Systems Metaphor Computer Systems (1982–1994) was an American computer company that created an advanced workstation, database gateway, unique graphical office interface, and software applications that "seamlessly integrate" data from both internal and ...

. They extended the Star desktop concept into an animated graphic and communicating office-automation model and sold the company to IBM. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said that the Xerox graphical interface influenced both Microsoft and Apple.

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

of Apple said that “Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry, could have been the IBM of the nineties, could have been the Microsoft of the nineties." While there is some truth that Xerox management failed to see the potential of many of PARC's inventions, this was mostly a problem with its computing research, a relatively small part of PARC's operations. A number of GUI engineers left to join

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

. Technologies pioneered by its materials scientists such as

liquid-crystal display A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display A flat-panel display (FPD) is an electronic display used to display visual content such as text or images. It is present in consumer, medical, transportation, and industrial equipmen ...

(LCD), optical disc innovations, and laser printing were actively and successfully introduced by Xerox to the business and consumer markets.

Distinguished researchers

Among PARC's distinguished researchers were three Turing Award winners:

Butler W. Lampson Butler W. Lampson, ForMemRS, (born December 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist best known for his contributions to the development and implementation of distributed personal computing. Education and early life After graduating from the ...

(1992), Alan Kay (2003), and

Charles P. Thacker Charles Patrick "Chuck" Thacker (February 26, 1943 – June 12, 2017) was an American pioneer computer designer. He designed the Xerox Alto, which is the first computer that used a mouse-driven graphical user interface (GUI). Biography Tha ...

(2009). The

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM) Software System Award recognized the Alto system in 1984,

in 1987, InterLisp in 1992, and the remote procedure call in 1994. Lampson, Kay, Bob Taylor, and Charles P. Thacker received the National Academy of Engineering's prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2004 for their work on the Alto.

References

External links

PARC official websiteOral history interview with Terry Allen Winograd
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Oral history interview with Paul A. Strassmann
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Oral history interview with William Crowther
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis {{Authority control PARC History of human–computer interaction Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Technology transfer Flexible displays Research organizations in the United States Companies based in Palo Alto, California Technology companies established in 1970 Software companies of the United States Science and technology in the San Francisco Bay Area Research and development in the United States Corporate spin-offs 1970 establishments in California