Xerox PARC Research Center Looks Back on 40 Years of Invention

eWeek reports: "The Palo Alto Research Center started out on Sept. 23, 1970, as Xerox PARC, the R&D arm of Xerox. The idea was not to build a better document copier but to get into the overall 'business of breakthroughs,' as the institution describes itself. In 2002, PARC was incorporated as a wholly owned yet independent subsidiary company of Xerox. Currently, PARC has an impressive list of customers, with about 40 percent of its business from Xerox and 30 percent from government contracts. Its 2009 revenue was about $60 million. Many familiar inventions were dreamed up at PARC, including the graphical user interface for computers, laser printing, computer programming languages, Ethernet networking and VLSI (very large-scale integration) circuit design. The following slide show highlights some of those innovations."