Xerox PARC’s Charter
Asked to describe their vision of the charter for the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and of their role at PARC, the following group of early employees gave diverse responses.
If Xerox was going to be an interesting company in the 80's and 90s, it was going to have to move out beyond copiers to a broader context of dealing with information that knowledge-workers used. The office in the 60s and 70s used analog technology. It seemed that digital technology could be developed to allow people to work with knowledge."-Robert Taylor, at PARC during 1970-83 and now director of Digital Equipment Corp.'s Systems Research Center.
Xerox offered 10 years of blank-check funding. They never promised to make the stuff into products; that wasn't the charter." -Alan Kay, 1970-81, now a research fellow at Apple Computer Inc.
PARC had three roles: to be a resource to the rest of the company, consulting and advising and assisting; to be viewed as an absolutely first-class research facility by the rest of the world; and to have some discernible impact on Xerox Corp.'s product line five years hence." -Richard G. Shoup, 1970-79, now chairman of Aurora Systems.
What office workers are really in the business of doing is not copying pieces of paper; it's copying information. PARC was going to make other ways of manipulating and handling that information.'' -Jim Mitchell, 1971-84, now director of Acorn Computer Co.'s Palo Alto research facility.
Xerox offered 10 years of blank-check funding. They never promised to make the stuff into products; that wasn't the charter." -Alan Kay
Alan Kay said we were going to do a 10-year project, and I thought that at the end of 1980 we would have a Dynabook." -Larry Tesler, 1973-80, now manager of object-oriented systems at Apple Computer Inc.
I was fresh out of graduate school. I knew I would be working with amorphous semiconductors, and that was exciting. -David Thornburg, 1971-81, now cofounder of Koala Technologies Inc.
There seemed to be a sort of open agenda as to what we did. Each of us had his own vision of what was possible." -Dan Ingalls, 1971-84, now a principal engineer at Apple Computer Inc.
The only particular thing I remember is I figured that if Alan Kay works there, I bet I don't have to wear a tie. I was right." -Doug Fairbairn, 1972-80, now vice president for user-designed technology at VLSI Technologies Inc.
I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be put to work making copiers; they argued that the issues of software development and productivity were going to be Important to them." -Warren Teitelman, 1972-84, now manager of programming environments at Sun Microsystems.
We would be doing good computer science in an environment in which it would eventually find its way into office products." -Chuck Geschke, 1972-82, now executive vice president at Adobe Systems Inc.
I came to work on some special-purpose system architecture, to explore how to create custom digital hardware-software systems."-Lynn Conway, 1973-83, now professor of electrical engineering and computer science and associate dean of engineering at the University of Michigan, after a recent stint as a manager of computer research at DARPA.
Xerox PARC had this aura of being a very far-out place. It was corporate, but it was very unusual for anything corporate to have the apparent foresight to bring some of the best people in the world together and let them do anything they wanted." -Alvy Ray Smith, 1973-74, now director of graphics research in Lucasfilm Ltd.'s computer graphics department; soon to be vice president and chief technical officer of Pixar Inc., a spin-off of Lucasfilm.
I really didn't have a good understanding-I don't think anybody had. It was more a question of who we would be working with.'' -Charles Simonyi, 1974-81, now manager of application development at Microsoft Corp.
It isn't PARC's job to develop products. PARC's job is to develop the ideas on which we can produce a product scenario.'' -John Ellenby, 1974-80, now president of Grid Systems Corp.
The charter was to explore various forms of office systems, to try things out, to develop software and systems that would be useful in offices. It made perfectly good sense to me.'' -Severo Ornstein, 1974-83, now national chairman of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
I was hired to manage the Systems Science Lab, basically centered around using computers. Alan [Kay) was probably one of the drawing attractions." -Bert Sutherland, 1975-81, now a founder of Sutherland, Sproull & Associates, Inc.
Very few people were hired with a specific project in mind. If you're a researcher, it's up to you to be a self-motivator." -John Warnock, 1978-82, now president of Adobe Systems Inc.