from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
XEROX PARC
Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto Research Centre
PARC
/zee'roks park'/ {Xerox Corporation}'s Palo Alto Research
Center.
For more than a decade, from the early 1970s into the
mid-1980s, PARC yielded an astonishing volume of
ground-breaking hardware and software innovations. The modern
mice, windows, and icons ({WIMP}) style of software interface
was invented there. So was the {laser printer} and the
{local-area network}; {Smalltalk}; and PARC's series of D
machines anticipated the powerful {personal computers} of the
1980s by a decade. Sadly, the prophets at PARC were without
honour in their own company, so much so that it became a
standard joke to describe PARC as a place that specialised in
developing brilliant ideas for everyone else.
The stunning shortsightedness and obtusity of XEROX's
top-level {suits} has been well described in the reference
below.
["Fumbling The Future: How XEROX Invented, Then Ignored, the
First Personal Computer" by Douglas K. Smith and Robert
C. Alexander (William Morrow & Co., 1988, ISBN
0-688-09511-9)].
[{Jargon File}]
(1995-01-26)