Xerox PARC Pierce Castleberry Xerox Corporation is recognized as a manufacturer and seller of copying machines for office, graphics

and high print volume businesses. The company posted 15.8 billion dollars in revenue in 2009. The history of Xerox goes back to 1906 as the Haloid Company, which produced photographic paper for cameras. In 1949 with the help of Chester Carlsons invention of electro photography (later called xerography), Xerox (then, called Haloid Xerox) made their first announcement of xerography. They sold their first machine in 1950. Later, in 1959, Xerox introduced the 914-model plain paper office copier. This machine is responsible for the success of Xerox because from 1950 until 1970, Xerox had a monopoly on the copying industry. By 1961, Xerox had made $60 million in revenue (close to $500 million in todays terms). In 1970, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was opened to conduct research in electro-physics and computer-related software sciences. Research continues today at Xerox PARC as well as four other locations: Xerox Research Centre of Canada, Xerox Research Centre Europe, Xerox Research Center Webster and Xerox India Innovation Hub. Out of the five research centers, Xerox PARC is the most famous with a history of creating some of the greatest innovations in computing technology. A small list of accomplishments: Xerox PARC is responsible for the invention of Ethernet, the first personal computer, the mouse, the graphical user interface (GUI), the laser printer, the personal workstation, object-oriented programming, the IP part of TCP/IP (which was originally called PARC Universal Packet), as well as biomedical contributions, co-design of the IPv6 protocols that govern and define how the internet

works and, more recently, electronic reusable paper (a led quality version of what can be seen on the Caprica TV show and Minority Report movie). One of the more interesting inventions at Xerox PARC was the WYSIWYG screen-toprint interface demonstrated by the Bravo word processing program. The idea was to be able to see the fonts, layout and design of a document before you printed it out. All of this was being developed at the same time as the PARC Online Office System (POLOS). The POLOS development assumed that computers were always going to be too expensive to own and was designed as a central system with many terminals connected to it. These terminals would use the computing power of the central located system in order to share computing power. The more people attached to the main system, the slower it got. In addition, the POLOS interface was very hard to use. It required knowledge of different key combinations and even a special key pad for commands. Timothy Mott and Lawrence Tesler, both PARC employees, despised POLOS and tried to find another word processing program with a better interface design and easier to use. A program called Bravo was one of PARCs word processing prototype programs but it had many flaws. One of the flaws was that Bravo was confusing to use because it had a command mode and a text mode. For instance, if you were in command mode while thinking you were in text mode and you had a fully typed page and you typed the word edit, the command mode would select the entire document, delete it and insert a t. Mott and Tesler decided to create a graphical interface for Bravo that did not have these two modes. They called it Gypsy. The unique factor about the Gypsy project is that this was the first time researchers were interested in how non-engineers would react with a computer. Mott used editors from Ginn & Co. as their guinea pigs. Ginn & Co. was a publishing company owned by Xerox. From this test came

common editing techniques as cut and paste because as the editors from Ginn & Co. were using Gypsy, they expressed desire to be able to do what they could do physically. Furthermore, Ideas were generated about further layout and design principles to make the computer an effective instrument for word processing. When Gypsy program was finally completed, the Alto system with software installed was delivered to Ginn & Co. The users were able to do on the computer what they had to do in the real world and, incidentally, the mouse furnished with the system was used for the first time similar to the way we use it today: for point and click operations to select a draft of a file and open it. Gypsy was so successful that PARC eventually abandoned POLOS. Tesler was hard at work with his own task while Mott was studying human interaction. Tesler was designing a user interface for the program. His idea was to use menus and icons much like we have today. Teslers main obstacle was that the processing power of the Alto was weighed down by the graphical interface. While recording a demonstration on video tape, Tesler had to slow the recording to 1/9th of the actual speed so that when someone watched the tape, it seemed natural while playing it in real time. The idea at the time was that processing speed would eventually catch up with the graphic intensity of the interface. One cannot talk about Xerox PARCs accomplishments without recognizing the source of their income: copiers. These machines started as loud, clunky fire hazards and have evolved into more efficient office systems. Aside from copying, they email hard copy documents by scanning them and routing them to an email address, printing documents from computers and many other features. Xerox takes technology from their production copiers/printers and eventually puts the same features in their office machines. Some of this technology includes the

ability to scan a hard copy document and put page numbers at the top or bottom of the duplicates, scanning a document and producing folded, stapled duplicates. In 1997, Xerox introduced the first digital color xerographic copier called the 5775 and in 1996 the first generation of color xerographic presses, the DocuColor 40. These digital copiers had many benefits over the analog ones. The digital copier was essentially a laser printer connected to a scanner whereas an analog copier was more like an old film camera. Xerox is also making endeavors into a combination of internet technologies and commercial printer processes with a process called the New Business of Printing. This allows commercial printers to provide enhanced service for their customers. The New Business of Printing includes Just in Time Printing where the customer can get as few or as many prints as they want when they want it. Previously, printers had minimums that had to be met when customers ordered documents. In addition, One to One printing (also called variable data printing) is important for a company to deliver content based on what individual customers are interested in. Personalizing catalogs based on what customers have purchased in the past is an example of one to one printing. Finally, eCommerce is an important idea for a printing company as well as Xerox Internet Delivery which can make forms interactive through a browser interface.

Bibliography Xerox PARC website milestones. 2009. Available at: http://www.parc.com/about/milestones.html Hiltzik M. What You See Is What You Get. In:Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age. Harper Business. 1999. 194-228.