Inspired by ‘the visit’ to Xerox PARC

In 1979, the Xerox corporation granted Steve Jobs and colleagues from Apple a visit to PARC in exchange for several million dollars in Apple stock. During the course of several visits, engineers and Apple executives saw demos of Alto technology (complete with windows, icons, graphical user interface, and mouse) which were later adopted by Apple for its Lisa and Macintosh computers. Needless to say, the PARC engineers were less than thrilled, as they saw their own company give away technology they had worked on for many years. For some it was a betrayal which meant that Xerox had no intention of bringing their inventions to market anytime soon as expressed in the following song from XEROX PARC (the musical, Act II) – a duet between Adele Goldberg (then manager of the Learning Research Group @ PARC) and Steve Jobs.

Sometimes, a stranger comes along and helps you see
That what you thought today is not to be
Confusion, Illusion, Not to be

Sometimes, a stranger lifts the veil right off your face
That what you thought was true is out of place
Confusion, Illusion, Now I see…

For another version of the same story, see the following link.