“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
The Story
Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, founded in 1970, is the most famous example of an institution that invented the future and failed to profit from it. The Alto (1973) was the first personal computer with a graphical user interface, a mouse, a bitmapped display, and a WYSIWYG text editor — a decade before the Macintosh. Ethernet, invented by Bob Metcalfe at PARC, became the networking standard that connected the world's computers. Smalltalk, created by Alan Kay's team, introduced object-oriented programming, the MVC pattern, and the idea that computers should be tools for human thought, not just calculation.
Steve Jobs visited PARC in 1979 and saw the Alto's graphical interface. Apple's Lisa and Macintosh followed. Microsoft saw the Macintosh and built Windows. The entire graphical computing paradigm — the desktop metaphor, windows, menus, icons, pointing devices — traces to PARC's research. Xerox commercialized the laser printer. Everything else, they gave away through a combination of corporate indifference and licensing deals that undervalued the inventions by orders of magnitude.
Why They're in the Hall
PARC is in the museum as both fame and shame — the institution that proved research labs could invent transformative technology, and the cautionary tale of what happens when the institution that invents the future doesn't understand what it invented. Smalltalk's object-oriented model — which introduced the patterns that eventually produced the God Object — was too far ahead of its time for Xerox to commercialize. The Alto was too expensive for a copier company to justify. PARC invented the future. Katie's Law explains why Xerox chose the lazier path of selling copiers instead of computers.