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Xerox PARC Celebrates 40th Anniversary
CWmike writes "For 40 years, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center has been a place of technological creativity and bold ideas, writes Todd Weiss. The inventions it has spawned, from Ethernet networking to laser printing and the graphical user interface, have led to myriad technologies that allow us to use computers in ways that we take for granted today. When it opened on July 1, 1970, PARC was set up as a division of Xerox Corp. The idea was to invest in PARC as a springboard for developing new technologies and fresh concepts that would lead to future products. 'Conducting research at PARC four decades ago was like magic,' says Dr. Robert S. Bauer, who worked at PARC from 1970 to 2001. 'In an era of political and social upheaval, we came to work every day with a passion to free technology from the grip of the military-industrial complex and bring computation to the people.' Indeed, the company's 'technology first' culture has sometimes brought it under fire. PARC has often been criticized for its past failures to capitalize on some of its greatest inventions, allowing other companies to cash in on its ideas. (Today, PARC has a team working to protect its intellectual property.) Nevertheless, its reputation as a technology innovator is impeccable."
"We were conjouring all sorts of things in those early days. You really think a human invented the mouse? No, that that was Gogalish the Destroyer, or Gog as his friends call him."
Why no comments then? :(
...a company made successful by copying, created so much original technology.
"PARC has often been criticized for its past failures to capitalize on some of its greatest inventions" How is that PARC's fault? More likely the short-sighted Xerox management that failed to see what they had?
The mouse, ethernet, OOP... who cares? Isn't LambdaMOO enough of a reason to celebrate PARC?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
They ripped off Apple, anyway.
I guess PARC's research into Hypertext wasn't worth mentioning?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
'In an era of political and social upheaval, we came to work every day with a passion to free technology from the grip of the military-industrial complex and bring computation to the people.'
Much of PARC's success was because the country was in a deep recession in the late 70's and early 80's. All those guys with PhD's who wanted to live quiet lives as university professors were forced to get jobs instead, it allowed PARC to put together quite a brain trust.. But they probably would've done even better if they had stuck to technology instead of trying to solve the world's political and social issues. PARC employees heavily influenced the decline of the Association for Computing Machinery by taking over many of the leadership spots and pushing their social activist agenda.
There's a small but vocal bunch of people called "Space Nutters" who honestly believe modern computing and technology exists because of the Space Race. It's the other way around.
They both have large armadas of computer science projects that are not being successfully commercialized. I suspect these are not as profound developments as Xerox's was. But only time can tell.
The screenshot of the Alto shows smiling piggies, flowers, and a rainbow. Perhaps they should add "excessively-cute web-pages" to their list of firsts.
Table-ized A.I.
This is a fit occasion to call attention to the late Mark Weiser (1952-1999), the great popularizer of "ubiquitous computing," who was a key figure at PARC. I think he was also a visionary in the field of e-paper, which continues to slowly evolve but still isn't there yet.
Especially now that there are rumors that microsoft is working on a more compact version of their surface system. It will still be table sized, but more of the system will be built into the actual table surface rather then needing to be half a meter away.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
That was by Douglas Englebart about four miles away and 8 years before Xerox PARC, but in a similar liberated research department. He also invented the concept of virtual screens (windows) and icons. This was in the era of when computer graphics devices were just souped-up oscilloscopes: vector-drawing only. The software research groups shared ideas more openly then, probably no one imagined you could make money off these expensive toys then. The SRI was established to sequester military R&D funds from the main Stanford campus during the era of anti-war protests.
What's fun is, I got to celebrate their birthday by using my mouse to click on this announcement of their birthday.
"a passion to free technology from the grip of the military-industrial complex and bring computation to the people"
And now we have to free technology from the grip of the large corporate-industrial complex and bring computation to the people.
Not much has changed.
Meshach wrote:
I do not think anyone 40 years ago dreamed that computers would ever be a prevalent in society as they are in the present. Most early computer scientists saw themselves as playing a game not developing the infrastructure that exists now.
Prevalent? The visionaries saw where it could go.
42 years ago, people were thinking about prevalent personal computing like laptops & tablets:
Excerpt from wikipedia about Alan Key's "Dynabook" concept:
To say it another way, this was like dreaming up the OLPC in 1968.
*shrug* They had to invent the tech behind today's "prevalent infrastructure" just to make things happen.
Here is Steve Jobs talking about his visit to Xerox Parc - not quite 40 years ago, but close enough:
Excerpt from the documentary "Triumph of the Nerds"
(As an aside, I'm reading Anathem again - Computer Science could really benefit from Lorites.)