Xerox reaches the end of an era

Now, the 30-year-old center is at the end of an era. Once thought of as a pure research lab, PARC faces pressures to be more like other research parks that focus on improving high-tech bottom lines.

Xerox Corp., which failed to profit from some of PARC's biggest innovations, is losing money. Last week the Stamford, Conn.-based photocopier giant announced it was looking for "noncompetitive partners" who would buy a stake in PARC and help commercialize the work of its 300 researchers.

Venture-capital firms have expressed interest, among them Seattle-based Timberline Venture Partners, whose managing partner, Jeff Tung, once worked inside Xerox trying to take the company's innovations to market.

"I've seen all the gold nuggets lying around," Tung said. "Just because the gold miner has a leaky pan doesn't mean there isn't any gold there."

PARC became a Silicon Valley legend largely because its original mission was more like that of a university laboratory than a corporate research division, which tends to try to make existing products better, faster and cheaper.

"It allowed researchers who understood the issues so deeply — far more deeply than the managers — to see what was worth looking at and what was worth thinking about," said Robert Spinrad, PARC's director from 1978 to 1982. "There was a spirit and an excitement about the whole place because we were so clearly, so demonstrably ahead of the game."

Even a partial list of things invented or improved upon at PARC in the 1970s is impressive: the mouse; the personal computer, known as the "Alto" in PARC's labs; the laser printer; "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" word processing; Ethernet.

PARC also anticipated the Internet long before it became a reality.

"The scientists at PARC were given extraordinary leeway in pursuing 'the office of the future,"' said John Warnock, who left PARC in 1982 to co-found Adobe Systems Inc. "I had unprecedented freedom to pursue ideas, and was working with the best scientists in the business."

But with Xerox focusing on promoting its copiers and printers, it brought few of PARC's developments to market. And in those days, federal law didn't allow software innovations — such as a screen icon — to be patented. Many researchers published their work independently, or showed it at conferences.