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Computer Programming Software Terms, Glossary and Dictionary
Xerox PARC: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was a flagship research division of the Xerox Corporation, based in Palo Alto, California, USA. It was founded in 1970, and spun out as a separate company wholly owned by Xerox in 2002. It is best known for essentially creating the modern personal computer graphical user interface (GUI) paradigm. 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.
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