George Pake, director Xerox PARC (left) and Jack Goldman, V.P. R&D and PARC founder (right)
After convincing Peter McCullough (Xerox CEO) that the company needs a new research facility to explore new technologies, Jack Goldman (VP R&D @ Xerox) hires George Pake to be its director. Both had taught physics at Carnegie Melon and ran into each other over the years at various physics conferences and late-night poker games. George was provost at Washington University in St. Louis during the late 60’s when protests of the Vietnam War presented a challenge to the smooth running of the University and accepted Jack’s offer to lead a first-rate research center as he might an academic institution. And so, Xerox PARC took on the relaxed environment of a university without the formal trappings of the parent’s corporate culture (a paradigm adopted by future Silicon Valley companies). It was George’s idea to site the new research center in Palo Alto near Stanford University where he had previously taught, and his suggestion to call it Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). That it was not far from Xerox’s computer acquisition SDS, proved to be a useful selling point.

‘Creating the Space’ (from the musical XEROX PARC), starts as a duet between Jack & George, and segues into a production number with the ensemble at PARC. Music & Lyrics by Terry Crystal; Piano arrangement & all voices for this demo by Eric J Chen (aka Yiquin).