Unlike Xerox's existing research laboratory in Rochester, New York, which focused on refining and expanding the company's photocopier 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.[7] In late April of 2023, Xerox announced the donation of the lab to SRI International.[8]
On July 1, 1970, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center opened.[10] Its 3,000-mile distance from Xerox headquarters in Rochester, New York, afforded scientists at the new lab great freedom in their work, but it 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 SRIAugmentation Research Center (ARC) as that facility's funding from DARPA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force began to be reduced. By leasing land at Stanford Research Park, it encouraged Stanford University 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.
After three decades as a division of Xerox, PARC was transformed in 2002[7] into an independent, wholly owned subsidiary company dedicated to developing and maturing advances in science and business concepts.
Xerox announced that it would donate the lab and its related assets to SRI International in April 2023. As part of the deal, Xerox would keep most of the patent rights inside PARC, and benefit from a preferred research agreement with SRI/PARC.[8] On January 18, 2024, SRI announced the research group from the PARC will become its Future Concepts division.[12]
Developments
Xerox AltoPARC Tab
PARC's developments in information technology served for a long time as standards for much of the computing industry. Many advancements made at the center were not equaled or surpassed for two decades. Xerox PARC has been the inventor and incubator of many elements of modern computing, including:
Most of these developments were included in the Alto, which added the computer mouse.[14] These developments unified into a single model most aspects of now-standard personal computers use. The integration of Ethernet[6] into the computer prompted the development of the PARC Universal Packet architecture, which is structured much like the modern Internet's architecture.
PARCTab
The PARCTab is an experimental mobile computing device as an early experiment in ubiquitous computing (UbiComp).[15] Its appearance resembles a personal digital assistant (PDA). Its functionality depends on the user's location, by receiving location-specific information via infrared sensors from gateway nodes installed in a particular location.[16]
It has a touch screen, stylus, and handwriting recognition. Xerox designed the similar and larger PARCPad. Both devices were developed around the same time as the Apple Newton.[17]
Xerox has been heavily criticized, particularly by business historians, for failing to properly commercialize and profitably exploit PARC's innovations.[19] Xerox management failed to see the global potential of many of PARC's inventions, but this was mostly a problem with its computing research, a relatively small part of PARC's operations.
One notable example of this is the graphical user interface (GUI), initially developed at PARC for the Alto and then sold as the Xerox 8010 Information System workstation (with office software called Star) by the Xerox Systems Development Department, introduced in 1981. It heavily influenced future system design, but was deemed a failure because Xerox only sold about 25,000 units of the computer. A small group from PARC led by David Liddle and Charles Irby formed Metaphor Computer Systems in 1982. Metaphor Computer Systems extended the Star desktop concept into an animated graphic and communicating office-automation model. By 1987, the company had an annual revenue of $39.7 million, and was acquired by IBM in 1991.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said that the Xerox graphical interface has notably influenced Microsoft and Apple. Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs 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."[21][22]
↑"ContactArchived 2014-08-23 at the Wayback Machine." PARC. Retrieved on November 11, 2010. "PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) 3333 Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA"
↑Douglas K. Smith; Robert C. Alexander (1988). Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer. William Morrow & Co. ISBN978-0688069599.
Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (HarperCollins, New York, 1999) ISBN0-88730-989-5
Douglas K. Smith, Robert C. Alexander, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1988) ISBN1-58348-266-0
M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (Viking Penguin, New York, 2001) ISBN0-670-89976-3
