 This was pretty interesting story. In the news today, I think, I don't know how many of you are familiar with PARC. PARC is the Palo Alto Research Center. But PARC was part of Xerox, remember Xerox? Xerox, which today is owned by Fujifilm. Xerox used to be a major US corporation. It set up the Palo Alto Research Center as a private research lab, like Bell Labs and like many other labs that were affiliated with American business. PARC was one of the leading research labs in the world during its time. Indeed, you can go back to 1940, where as, well, no, this wouldn't be 1940. But anyway, so I'll get to 1940 in a minute. But anyway, PARC today has been formally, in a sense, shut down, or not really shut down, but it was donated to SRI, SRI International. SRI International stands for Silicon Research Institute. Sorry, not Silicon, what am I talking about? Stanford Research Institute. But it changed its name at some point to SRI to separate itself from Stanford itself. It is a private, non-for-profit research laboratory. And they do all kind of research. And it was originally, or the origins of SRI, were RCA laboratories. So it used to be in, before government basically started pouring gazillions of dollars into scientific research and into technological research and basically crowding out private capital. Most of the cutting-edge research in the United States, particularly ones that had real applications, were being done in private research labs. The most famous of them, of course, is Bell Labs, which was owned by AT&T. RCA laboratories, which was owned by RCA. The record label, the transistor maker, the radio station. And later, that RCA became part of SRI. Anyway, in 1940, RCA laboratories demonstrated the world's first commercial transmission electron microscope. There's just a few highlights from the history of SRI and PARC. In 1969, SRI, then associated with Stanford University, was involved in the first transmission on the UP, UPANET. UPANET was, of course, the first computer network, which served ultimately as the foundation of the internet. In 1973, PARC created, PARC, that was owned at the time by Xerox, created the first personal workstation, really the first personal computer. I don't know if you guys knew this. PARC created the first personal computer. In 1974, the David Sanov Research Center, which was part of SRI, invented the amorphous solar silicon cell, which was the building block of solar technology. 1975, PARC released the first graphical user interface, GUI, which contains icons and pop-up menus, and they can overlap and require point and click interaction, the foundation of how we use computers today. In 1988, PARC coined the term ubiquitous computing, describing a future where mobile devices are connected through the internet. PARC has been a massive innovator in computers. SRI has been a massive innovator in a variety of different scientific technological realms. It's nice to see that PARC wasn't just shut down, that it is being transferred, and the buildings will be preserved by SRI, and research will continue in them. Famously, it was at PARC that Steve Jobs first saw that user interface of windows, icons, and a mouse. PARC is where the mouse, the computer mouse, was invented. So Steve Jobs basically took that. I mean, one of the great failures of Xerox, and if you will, one of the great corporate failures ever, was that PARC innovated all these innovations. Xerox never benefited from them. That is, Xerox never invested in computers, or when it did finally, it was way too late, never invested in commercializing all the inventions, being made at PARC. And it took Steve Jobs to basically figure it out, learn from it, and then apply it all, and apply it into the first Apple computers. And certainly, by the time of the Macintosh, the whole mouse interface was born, and has come to dominate all computing. So a major American institution, a testament to American innovation, American investment in science and technology, and a testament to the fact that great innovation and great investment in science does not, indeed, should not happen at the government level. But these innovations are going to happen when you leave the individual entrepreneurs and private companies to invest and do these things. And even when something like PARC is not capitalized on, as Xerox never really capitalized on PARC to the extent that they could have, that knowledge is not lost. That knowledge is picked up by people like Steve Jobs, and then they utilize it. Xerox did not prohibit Apple from using its technology, and were all massive beneficiaries of that. So yes, I think an important day in the history of technology in the United States. And again, the more I read about these private labs, the more impressed I am, you know, that PARC today has about 1,000 employees. All of those will join SRI and enhance the research areas that SRI has involved in. Some of those include computer vision, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and robotics. So you know, these are spaces that these companies, these entities, if you will, these research entities, have been focused on for a long, long time. And it's more proof, again, that you don't need government to generate basic research that leads to great technology breakthroughs. You can do it privately, and these companies have done it privately for a long time. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Brook show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com. I go to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. 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