“There was a rivalry in Datamation [magazine] advertisements between Xerox’s SDS and DEC,” recalled Alan Kay, who came to PARC as a researcher from Stanford University‘s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in late 1970. “When we wanted a PDP-10, Xerox envisioned a photographer lining up a shot of DEC boxes going into the PARC labs, so they said, ‘How about a Sigma 7?’ ”

The result was MAXC (Multiple Access Xerox Computer), which emulated the PDP-10 but used semiconductor dynamic RAMs instead of core. So much care was lavished on MAXC’s hardware and software that it held the all-time record for continuous availability as a node on the ARPAnet.

“One of the blood oaths that was taken by the original founders was that we would never do a system that wasn’t engineered for 100 users,” said Kay. “That meant that if it was a time-sharing system, you had to run 100 people on it; if it was a programming language, 100 people had to program in it without having their hands constantly held. If it was a personal computer, you had to be able to build 100.”

Alan Kay took a sabbatical beginning in March 1980 and never returned to PARC. Doug Fairbairn, Larry Tesler, and John Ellenby also left that year. In 1981 the exodus continued, with researchers including David Thornburg, Charles Simonyi, and Bert Sutherland packing their knapsacks. By June of 1984, John Warnock, Chuck Geschke, Lynn Conway, Dan Ingalls, Warren Teitelman, and Jim Mitchell had moved on. Bob Taylor had also left, taking a group of researchers with him that included Chuck Thacker and Butler Lampson.