PARC (company)


PARC is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Formed in 1969, the company was originally a subsidiary of Xerox, and was tasked with creating computer technology-related products and hardware systems.
Founded by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, Xerox Corporation's chief scientist, Xerox PARC has been in large part responsible for such developments as laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer, graphical user interface and desktop paradigm, object-oriented programming, ubiquitous computing, electronic paper, amorphous silicon applications, the mouse and advancing very-large-scale integration for semiconductors. Jack's “Advanced Scientific & Systems Laboratory” aimed to develop future technologies; it was not intended to reproduce the already existing Xerox's research laboratory in Rochester, New York, which focused on refining and expanding the company’s copier business. Instead, Xerox PARC was a site for pioneering work in advanced physics, materials science, and computer science applications.
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.
On July 1, 1970, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center opened. 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 as that facility's funding began falling, from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and U.S. Air Force. Being situated on Stanford Research Park land leased from Stanford University encouraged 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.
PARC's current work is centered around a series of Focus Areas which include: Artificial Intelligence and Human-Machine Collaboration; Digital Workplace; Novel Printing; Internet of Things and Machine Intelligence; Digital Design and Manufacturing; Microsystems and Smart Devices.
Many technologies are available for license and commercialization through PARC's Commercialization Program, such as: Wavelength Shift Detector; Fittle; Hyperspectral Imaging Technology; Filament Extension Atomizer; Hand-Held Flow Cytometer; Hipergraph; Makesim; Self-Cooling Paint; Fiber Optic Sensing Systems; Printed Gas Sensing; Dialog Systems; FIELDS; and Industrial Internet of Things System Analytics.
PARC's thin-film and optoelectronics cleanroom facilities allow clients to design, test, develop new processes, build prototypes, and transition technology to manufacturing. PARCs Thin-film Cleanroom can be used to prototype display and imager thin film transistor backplanes compatible with manufacturing facilities. Optoelectronic cleanroom services include work with AlGalnN semiconductor materials.
PARC's research areas encompass a range of disciplines in hardware, software, social sciences, and design. Areas include ubiquitous sensing, electrochemical energy systems, material deposition systems, polymeric and composite materials, semiconductor materials, printing for manufacturing, optical sensors, optical and mechanical microsystems, printed and hybrid electronics, large-area thin-film electronics, optoelectronic devices, user experience design, systems security, system prognosis and health management, modeling and simulation of cyber-physical systems, interactive machine learning, human-machine collaboration, geometric and spatial reasoning, data science, conversational agents, and computer vision and image synthesis.

Accomplishments

Xerox PARC has been the inventor and incubator of many elements of modern computing in the contemporary office work place:
Most of these developments were included in the Alto, which added the now familiar Stanford Research Institute 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 for failing to properly commercialize and profitably exploit PARC's innovations. A favorite example is the graphical user interface, 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, Alan Kay, and Charles P. Thacker. The Association for Computing Machinery 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, 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.