How Xerox's PARC Invented the Digital World But Rarely Profited From It

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Xerox established the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) on July 1, 1970, with a mandate to develop technologies entirely outside its core copier business. Over the following decade, PARC researchers produced landmark innovations including the GUI-based personal computer, the modern mouse, Ethernet, the laser printer, and the Smalltalk programming language. Despite this extraordinary output, Xerox struggled to commercialize most inventions — its GUI-based workstation, the Xerox Star, was priced at $100,000 and failed to find a mass market. A 1979 visit by Steve Jobs to PARC influenced the development of Apple's Macintosh, though Xerox had already attempted to bring similar technology to market. In 2023, Xerox donated PARC to research institute SRI International, closing a chapter on one of technology history's most prolific yet commercially unrewarded laboratories.

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