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centre set up by the photocopier firm Xerox, XeroxPARC (Xerox
Palo Alto Research Centre). The United States's disastrous and highly
controversial involvement in the Vietnam War had many repercus-
sions, including that of inciting a generation of objectors and draft
refusees to acts of civil disobedience, confrontation and violence. It
also brought into question the role of military funding in university
research, which many felt to be a threat to academic independence.
Thus, in
, in an amendment to the Military Procurement
Authorization Bill, a committee headed by Senator Mike Mansfield
proposed that 'none of the funds authorized . . . may be used to
carry out any research project or study unless such a study has
a direct and apparent relationship to a specific military function
or operation'.
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The Mansfield Amendment particularly affected
those working in the kinds of computer research which had been
largely funded by ARPA and had benefited from ARPA's open-ended
remit. The National Science Foundation, which might have taken
up the slack, was not given sufficient funds. At the same time
Xerox was becoming alarmed at the idea of the 'paperless office',
the revolution in business life that computers were, apparently,
about to bring about. To meet this challenge Xerox decided to
become part of the computer revolution itself. To this end it set up
XeroxPARC on the West Coast of the United States. The choice of
Palo Alto, rather than New Haven, the preference of Jacob Goldman,
head of corporate research at Xerox, was fortuitous. Not only
was Silicon Valley just beginning to become the centre of micro-
electronics, but it was also near the epicentre of alternative counter-
cultural thinking. All in all it was an ideal situation to attract young
and unconventional computer scientists and researchers.
The first head of XeroxPARC was Bob Taylor, J.C.R. Licklider's
successor at IPTO, ARPA's computing research arm. One of the
first acts Taylor undertook was to buy a number of blue corduroy
beanbags for the Center, which helped to create a laid-back campus
atmosphere undoubtedly congenial to the kinds of researcher they
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