Xerox PARC Celebrates 50 Years
Xerox PARC is celebrating its 50th yr in enterprise in 2020, and eWEEK thought it could have a look again—AND a glance ahead—into what this place was, and can be, all about.
Xerox PARC, 1970
Xerox PARC, which holds greater than 3,000 patents in its 50 years of existence, is a legendary IT artistic useful resource in Silicon Valley. Ideas that originated on this lab within the Palo Alto, Calif. Foothills embody laptop networking, the graphical consumer interface, the non-public laptop and laser printing—just some fairly necessary innovations.
Laser Printing, 1971
The laser printer, based mostly on a modified xerographic copier, was invented at Xerox PARC by researcher Gary Starkweather, who had a completely purposeful networked printer system working by 1971. Laser printing ultimately turned a multibillion-dollar enterprise for Xerox.
The Alto Computer, 1973
In 1972, Xerox determined to supply a private laptop for analysis functions. This turned the Alto laptop, the results of a joint effort by Ed McCreight, Chuck Thacker, Butler Lampson, Bob Sproull and Dave Boggs, who have been trying to make a tool that was sufficiently small to slot in an workplace comfortably but highly effective sufficient to assist a dependable, high-quality working system and graphics show. Its GUI featured home windows and icons. A number of years later, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak borrowed a few of these concepts and began Apple Computer.
Networking Genius, 1973-75
Bob Metcalfe did the analysis on high-speed networking at PARC within the 1970s and got here up with one thing he referred to as Ethernet, the title coming from the bodily idea of the ether. He later based 3COM to productize his child, and laptop networking hasn’t been the identical since.
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