This article was first published as “Inside the PARC: the ‘information architects’.” It appeared in the October 1985 issue of IEEE Spectrum. A PDF version is available on IEEE Xplore. The diagrams and photographs appeared in the original print version.
Goldman tells it differently. In 1969 Xerox had just bought Scientific Data Systems (SDS), a mainframe computer manufacturer. “When Xerox bought SDS,” he recalled, “I walked promptly into the office of Peter McColough and said, ‘Look, now that we’re in this digital computer business, we better damned well have a research laboratory!’ ”
In any case, the result was the