September 20, 2010, 1:37 PM — For 40 years, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (commonly called Xerox PARC, now just PARC) has been a place of technological creativity and bold ideas. The inventions it has spawned, from Ethernet networking to laser printing and the graphical user interface (GUI), 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.
Just how important is PARC in the history of IT and the high-tech products we use today? Well, InfoWorld has named PARC one of the Top 12 Holy Sites in IT. (See our timeline for its most significant computing milestones.)
Originally located at 3180 Porter Drive in Palo Alto, Calif., just a short distance from where it sits today, PARC Inc. was spun off by Xerox in January 2002 as an independent subsidiary of Xerox. Today, about 170 scientists and engineers and about 60 additional staff members work inside the 200,000-square-foot facility, where they seek answers to problems in manufacturing, development, business processes and other areas.
PARC's building includes well-stocked testing and lab facilities, a machine shop, prototyping equipment, a detailed technical and business information library and other amenities. Throughout the building, which is carved into the surrounding landscape, there's a window view from every office, and every floor has several outdoor patios -- all to encourage creative thought. The hallways are adorned with artworks by employees and local artists.
It's set up as a place where collaboration is the norm. Soft couches, floor-to-ceiling whiteboards, snacks, kitchen areas and creative toys -- from squishy balls to miniature Japanese sand gardens -- are sprinkled throughout the building's common areas so researchers can relax and be imaginative together.
As PARC prepared to celebrate the start of its fifth decade in ceremonies at its Palo Alto headquarters on Sept. 23, Computerworld talked with some of the key people in PARC's acclaimed history, asking them what it was like to work for Xerox PARC years ago and what they're working on today. Here are their stories, in their own words.
Robert S. Bauer, Ph.D.
Bauer joined Xerox PARC just a few months after it opened and stayed for more than 30 years as a researcher and leader of several PARC labs. A fellow of the American Physical Society, Bauer has served as an adviser for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, UNESCO and the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Defense and Homeland Security.
He left PARC in 2001 and now works with robotics start-up Willow Garage in Menlo Park, Calif., and as the CTO of information retrieval company H5 in San Francisco.
PARC is part of my DNA. I grew up there, almost, spending 36 years there. I joined PARC on the Monday before Thanksgiving in 1970 after getting my Ph.D. at Stanford University in electrical engineering.
I sent my résumé to Xerox, and they wanted me to also interview with PARC. Directory assistance didn't even have a listing for them yet. I had to call Xerox in Rochester, N.Y., to get the number.
PARC was started in a remote location so it wouldn't be influenced by Xerox. Its goals included the crazy idea of getting a laser to write on a copy machine. At the same time, Xerox was making a big bet on the paperless office, and the charge to PARC was to become "the architects of information." From the very beginning, the PARC vision was one of interpersonal communication and collaboration, networking personal computers to enable communal sharing.
