Founded in 1969 by Jacob Goldman, Xerox’s then chief scientist. As a division of Xerox, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) contributed to the foundation of many modern computing concepts like laser printing, communications, programming, and most significantly, the graphical user interface (GUI). The facility opened in July of 1970 and leased land from Stanford Research Park, which drew in Stanford graduate students to research projects. This collaboration was visionary at the time, and led to the invention of ethernet, the computer mouse, object-oriented programming, and much more. Much of these features were built into the Xerox Alto computer and the Xerox Star workstation. After nearly three decades PARC was spun off by Xerox as a subsidiary in 2002, then later the lab was donated to SRI International in 2023. PARC’s distinguished researchers include four Turing Award winners: Butler Lampson, Alan Kay, Charles P. Thacker, and Robert Metcalfe.
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