Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

XEROX PARC
     
        /zee'roks park'/ {Xerox Corporation}'s Palo Alto Research
        Center.
     
        For more than a decade, from the early 1970s into the
        mid-1980s, PARC yielded an astonishing volume of
        ground-breaking hardware and software innovations.  The modern
        mice, windows, and icons ({WIMP}) style of software interface
        was invented there.  So was the {laser printer} and the
        {local-area network}; {Smalltalk}; and PARC's series of D
        machines anticipated the powerful {personal computer}s of the
        1980s by a decade.  Sadly, the prophets at PARC were without
        honour in their own company, so much so that it became a
        standard joke to describe PARC as a place that specialised in
        developing brilliant ideas for everyone else.
     
        The stunning shortsightedness and obtusity of XEROX's
        top-level {suits} has been well described in the reference
        below.
     
        ["Fumbling The Future: How XEROX Invented, Then Ignored, the
        First Personal Computer" by Douglas K. Smith and Robert
        C. Alexander (William Morrow & Co., 1988, ISBN
        0-688-09511-9)].
     
        [{Jargon File}]
     
        (1995-01-26)