July 1, 1970: Xerox Opens PARC

Most computer fans have heard of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto research Center). It is the place where, in exchange for being allowed to purchase a million shares of Apple before the initial public offering, Apple employees got their first look at the graphical user interface. While that is PARC's best known contribution to technology it isn't its only one.

A small company called PIXAR (A.R. Smith, Ed Catmull) was started by former PARC denizens and everyone's favor image manipulation software company, Adobe, was also founded by former PARC employees (Geschke and Warnock). Even the CEO of Google (Dr. Eric Schmidt) once worked at PARC/ The contributions to technology don't stop there, the history minded remember that the first laser printer debuted at PARC.

Unfortunately, for Xerox, the early years of PARC were full of great ideas that were never fully monetized by Xerox. The hugely influential PARC was founded by Xerox on July 1, 1970.