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Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

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Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#31

Post by usr1106 »

tverbeure wrote: post #18
usr1106 wrote: post #3

As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".

Ever heard of Siri? It was an SRI spinout, acquired by Apple in 2010. https://www.sri.com/hoi/siri/

That's what Wikipedia tells. I had no clue where it came from. Of course it's not unheard of the big companies like Apple buy their best ideas from elsewhere.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#32

Post by usr1106 »

VagueMag wrote: post #22
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC basically a Pentagon funded think tank in Silicon Valley, though their best days were really the 1970s and 1980s.

Yeah SRI was what emerged when military/intelligence related work needed to be separated from Stanford University proper as a result of campus protests in the 60s over the university's involvement in chemical weapons and counterinsurgency research.

If that is true it gives me the kind of background I was looking for.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#33

Post by eichin »

ricktdotorg wrote: post #21
usr1106 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was their domain/hostname at the time?

"SRI" [1] [1] https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/63774...

The one people will remember, though, is SRI-NIC because that's where you FTP'ed the offical HOSTS.TXT file from (mid-to-late 1980s before DNS.)

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#35

Post by rchiang »

usr1106 wrote: post #31
tverbeure wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of Siri? It was an SRI spinout, acquired by Apple in 2010. https://www.sri.com/hoi/siri/

That's what Wikipedia tells. I had no clue where it came from. Of course it's not unheard of the big companies like Apple buy their best ideas from elsewhere.

This article gives a bit of context about Siri's history with SRI International: https://hbr.org/2015/09/the-president-of-sri-ventures-on-bri...

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#36

Post by Animats »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #4
usr1106 wrote: post #3

As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".

IIRC basically a Pentagon funded think tank in Silicon Valley, though their best days were really the 1970s and 1980s.

Yes. I dealt with them a lot in my aerospace days.

Boyer and Moore used to work there. I used their theorem prover for early proof of correctness work.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#37

Post by jldugger »

usr1106 wrote: post #3

As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".

SRI is like, the secret bit of stanford where the faculty only do research and no teaching. It's where Siri and Nuance came from, and two staffers who worked there in the 50s quit to found FairIssac. Most notably for the HN crowd, its where Englebart worked on his Mother of All Demos, and where LaTeX was written.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#39

Post by musicale »

jldugger wrote: post #37
usr1106 wrote: post #3

As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".

SRI is like, the secret bit of stanford where the faculty only do research and no teaching. It's where Siri and Nuance came from, and two staffers who worked there in the 50s quit to found FairIssac. Most notably for the HN crowd, its where Englebart worked on his Mother of All Demos, and where LaTeX was written.

SRI (formerly the Stanford Research Institute) split from Stanford University in 1970.

Students (et al.) had protested SRI's participation in secret (and military) research projects, and Stanford ultimately determined that secret research was incompatible with the university's mission.

Of course, like many universities, Stanford has aligned its actual priorities to focus primarily on endowment expansion and administrative employment.

Re: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

#40

Post by jldugger »

usr1106 wrote: post #31
tverbeure wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of Siri? It was an SRI spinout, acquired by Apple in 2010. https://www.sri.com/hoi/siri/

That's what Wikipedia tells. I had no clue where it came from. Of course it's not unheard of the big companies like Apple buy their best ideas from elsewhere.

> I had no clue where it came from.

Siri started life running on Android and iOS. They took it down when Apple bought the company two months after launching. So if you blinked you might have missed it =)

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