palo alto research centre

1 definition found

palo alto research centre - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  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)