Happy Birthday Xerox PARC

(Sung to the tune of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band)

It Was 40 Years Ago Today,

That Xerox brought us into the fray.

Tech’s been going in and out of style,

But we’re guaranteed to share the file.

So stop me if you’ve already been told,

of the center up on Page Mill Road.

Who built the modern GUI in-house,

Who also invented the mouse.

So without any further adieu,

I’d like to share with you.

As groundbreaking as Noah’s ark,

The 40th birthday of Xerox PARC.

Do you know where the laser printer, Ethernet, mouse, GUI (as we know it today) and the term “ubiquitous computing” come from? If you guessed the hills of Palo Alto then you’d be correct. Xerox’s famed PARC lab is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week.

I was fortunate enough to grow up just three miles from the Xerox PARC labs. Some of the inventions that came out of the lab have become part of our everyday life. While the technologies themselves are pretty amazing, the legacy of PARC is all about creativity. The lab has always been a place where engineers were given free reign to invent, share ideas and help dictate the technology of the future. In looking at the history of the region it’s important to understand that these attributes – creative, inventive, sharing – are what helped build Silicon Valley into the global power that it is.

So happy birthday to Xerox PARC and to the culture it has spawned.

Rob Goodman

Author: Rob Goodman

Rob Goodman is a communications professional with more than 27 years of experience in public relations, marketing and content creation.