And unlike university research laboratories, PARC had one unifying vision: it would develop “the architecture of information.” When the center opened in 1970, it was unlike other major industrial research laboratories its work wasn’t tied, even loosely, to its corporate parent’s current product lines. Some researchers say PARC was a product of the 1960s and that decade’s philosophy of power to the people, of improving the quality of life.
In the mid-1970s, close to half of the top 100 computer scientists in the world were working at PARC, and the laboratory boasted similar strength in other fields, including solid-state physics and optics.
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PARC, now in its 15th year, originated or nurtured technologies that led to these developments, among others: It employs approximately 350 researchers, managers, and support staff (by comparison, Bell Laboratories before the AT&T breakup employed roughly 25,000). PARC is one of three research centers within Xerox the other two are in Webster, N.Y., and Toronto, Ont., Canada. In any case, the result was the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California, one of the most unusual corporate research organizations of our time. “When Xerox bought SDS,” he recalled, “I walked promptly into the office of Peter McColough and said, ‘Look, now that we’re in this digital computer business, we better damned well have a research laboratory!’ ” In 1969 Xerox had just bought Scientific Data Systems (SDS), a mainframe computer manufacturer.
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