PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development
company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information
technology and hardware systems.Founded by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, Xerox Corporation's
chief scientist, in 1970, Xerox PARC has been in large part responsible for such developments
as laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer, graphical user interface (GUI) and
desktop paradigm, object-oriented programming, ubiquitous computing, electronic paper, amorphous
silicon (a-Si) applications, and advancing very-large-scale integration (VLSI) for semiconductors.
Xerox formed Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary in 2002.
== History == In 1969, Jack Goldman, Xerox's Chief Scientist,
spoke to George Pake, a physicist specializing in nuclear magnetic resonance and provost
of Washington University in St. Louis, about starting a second research center for the
company.
Pake selected Palo Alto, California, as the site of what was to become known as PARC.
While the 3,000 mile buffer between it and Xerox headquarters in Rochester, New York
afforded scientists at the new lab great freedom to undertake their work, the distance also
served as an impediment in persuading management of the promise of some of their greatest achievements.
PARC's West Coast location proved to be advantageous in the mid-1970s, when the lab was able to
hire many employees of the nearby SRI Augmentation Research Center (ARC) as that facility's funding
began falling, from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) and U.S. Air Force (USAF).
Being situated on Stanford Research Park land leased from Stanford Universityallowed Stanford
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.
== Today == 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 with the support of
commercial partners and clients.
Xerox remains the company's largest customer (50%), but PARC has many other corporate and
venture clients in different fields of use than Xerox including: VMware, Fujitsu, Dai
Nippon Printing (DNP), Samsung, NEC, SolFocus, Powerset, Thin Film Electronics ASA and many
more.
PARC currently conducts research into clean technology, metamaterials, user interface
design, sensemaking, ubiquitous computing and context-aware systems, large-area electronics,
digital manufacturing, and model-based control and optimization in embedded, intelligent
systems.
== Accomplishments == Xerox PARC has been the inventor and incubator
of many elements of modern computing in the contemporary office work place:
Laser printers Computer-generated bitmap graphics
The graphical user interface, featuring windows and icons, operated with a mouse
The WYSIWYG text editor Interpress, a resolution-independent graphical
page-description language and the precursor to PostScript
Ethernet as a local-area computer network Fully formed object-oriented programming (with
class-based inheritance, the most popular OOP model to this day) in the Smalltalk 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 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 mouse, 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 commercialized as the Xerox Star by the Xerox Systems Development Department.
Although very significant in terms of its influence on future system design, it is deemed
a failure because it only sold approximately 25,000 units.
A small group from PARC led by David Liddle 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.
== Distinguished researchers ==
Among PARC's distinguished researchers were three Turing Award winners: Butler W. Lampson
(1992), Alan Kay (2003), and Charles P. Thacker (2009).
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Software System Award recognized the Alto
system in 1984, Smalltalk 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.
== Legacy == 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.
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.
Technologies pioneered by its materials scientists such as liquid-crystal display (LCD), optical
disc innovations, and laser printing were actively and successfully introduced by Xerox
to the business and consumer markets.Work at PARC since the early 1980s includes advances
in ubiquitous computing, aspect-oriented programming, and IPv6.
== See also ==
GlobalView List of people associated with PARC
Xerox Daybreak (a.k.a.
Xerox Windows 6085