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 Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of

Xerox Corporation Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (having moved from St ...

, the company was originally a division of

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (having moved from St ...

, 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 Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

, the modern

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or te ...

, GUI (

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

) and desktop paradigm,

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

, ubiquitous computing,

electronic paper Electronic paper, also sometimes electronic ink, e-ink or electrophoretic display, are display devices that mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike conventional flat panel displays that emit light, an electronic paper display ...

, a-Si ( amorphous silicon) applications, the

computer mouse A computer mouse (plural mice, sometimes mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional space, two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer (user interface ...

, and VLSI ( very-large-scale integration) for

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way ...

s. 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 George E. Pake (April 1, 1924 – March 4, 2004) was a physicist and research executive primarily known for helping founded Xerox PARC. Early life Pake was raised in Kent, Ohio. His father was an English instructor at Kent State Univer ...

, a

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

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 Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

, 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 co ...

(ARC) as that facility's funding began falling, from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the A ...

), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

) and the U.S. Air Force. By leasing land at Stanford Research Park, 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 conside ...

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 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. I ...

. 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

, 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 ...

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 In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

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

as a local-area computer network *Fully formed object-oriented programming (OOP) (with class-based inheritance, the most popular OOP model to this day) in the Smalltalk

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

and integrated development environment *

Prototype-based programming Prototype-based programming is a style of object-oriented programming in which behaviour reuse (known as inheritance) is performed via a process of reusing existing objects that serve as prototypes. This model can also be known as ''prototypal ...

(the second most popular inheritance model in OOP) in the

Self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...

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 info ...

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's

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

(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 formed Metaphor Computer Systems. They extended the Star desktop concept into an animated graphic and communicating office-automation model and sold the company to IBM.

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

founder

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

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; ...

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 ...

. Technologies pioneered by its materials scientists such as

liquid-crystal display A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but ...

(LCD),

optical disc In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data ( bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surface ...

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 The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...

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 th ...

(1992), Alan Kay (2003), and Charles P. Thacker (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, Smalltalk in 1987, InterLisp in 1992, and the

remote procedure call In distributed computing, a remote procedure call (RPC) is when a computer program causes a procedure ( subroutine) to execute in a different address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network), which is coded as if it were a normal ...

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 The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

, Minneapolis
Oral history interview with Paul A. Strassmann
Charles Babbage Institute,

, Minneapolis
Oral history interview with William Crowther
Charles Babbage Institute,

, 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