trust company

Company, often a commercial bank, acting as trustee for individuals and businesses and providing related financial or estate-planning services. Trust services for individuals commonly include the administration of estates, living trusts (trusts that become effective during the lifetimes of their makers, or settlors), and testamentary trusts (trusts originating in a will). Services for businesses include the administration of corporate bond indentures and corporate pension funds. Trust companies may also serve as corporate stock registrars and as paying agents for the distribution of dividends.

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or closed-end trust

Financial organization that pools the funds of its shareholders and invests them in a diversified portfolio of securities. It differs from a mutual fund, which issues units representing diversified holdings rather than shares in the company itself. Investment trusts have a fixed number of shares for sale; their price depends on the market value of the underlying securities and on the demand for and supply of shares. The first modern investment trusts were formed in England and Scotland as early as 1860. Many early U.S. investment trusts failed with the collapse of the stock market in 1929, but others have since prospered under stricter federal regulation.

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Corporation that owns enough voting stock in one or more other companies to exercise control over them. A holding company provides a means of concentrating control of several companies with a minimum of investment; other means of gaining control, such as mergers or consolidations, are more complicated legally and more expensive. A holding company can reap the benefits of a subsidiary's goodwill and reputation while limiting its liability to the proportion of the subsidiary's stock that it owns. The parent company in a conglomerate corporation is usually a holding company.

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Specialized financial institution that supplies credit for the purchase of consumer goods and services. Finance companies purchase unpaid customer accounts at a discount from merchants and collect payments due from customers. They also grant small loans directly to consumers at a relatively high rate of interest.

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or commercial law or mercantile law

Legal rules and principles bearing on business organizations and commercial matters. It regulates various forms of legal business entities, including sole proprietors, partnerships, registered companies with limited liability, agents, and multinational corporations. Nearly all statutory rules governing business organizations are intended to protect creditors or investors. In addition, specific bodies of law regulate commercial transactions, including the sale and carriage of goods (terms and conditions, specific performance, breach of contract, insurance, bills of lading), consumer credit agreements (letters of credit, loans, security, bankruptcy), and relations between employers and employees (wages, conditions of work, health and safety, fringe benefits, and trade unions). It is a broad and continually evolving field. Seealso agency; corporation; debtor and creditor; intellectual property; labour law.

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Any corporation registered and operating in more than one country at a time, usually with its headquarters in a single country. A firm's advantages in establishing itself multinationally include both vertical and horizontal economies of scale (reductions in cost that result from an expanded level of output). Critics usually regard the multinational corporation as destructive of local economies abroad and as prone to monopolistic practices. Seealso conglomerate.

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Specific legal form of organization of persons and material resources, chartered by the state, for the purpose of conducting business. As contrasted with the other two major forms of business ownership, the sole proprietorship and the partnership, the corporation has several characteristics that make it a more flexible instrument for large-scale economic activity. Chief among these are limited liability, transferability of shares (rights in the enterprise may be transferred readily from one investor to another without constituting legal reorganization), juridical personality (the corporation itself as a fictive “person” has legal standing and may thus sue and be sued, make contracts, and hold property), and indefinite duration (the life of the corporation may extend beyond the participation of any of its founders). Its owners are the shareholders, who purchase with their investment a share in the proceeds of the enterprise and who are nominally enh1d to a measure of control over its financial management. Direct shareholder control became increasingly impossible in the 20th century, however, as the largest corporations came to have tens of thousands of shareholders. The practice of proxy voting by management was legalized and adopted as a remedy, and today salaried managers exercise strong control over the corporation and its assets. Seealso multinational corporation.

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U.S. government agency established (1932) to provide loans to railroads, banks, and businesses. The RFC was an attempt by Pres. Herbert Hoover to counter the early effects of the Great Depression by rescuing institutions from default. It was widely used by Pres. Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal and to finance defense plants in World War II. After the war, the RFC's powers and functions were gradually transferred to other agencies.

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Type of corporation that evolved in the 16th century in Europe. Under a charter granted by the state's sovereign authority, the company had certain rights and obligations which usually gave it a trading monopoly in a specific geographic area or for a specific type of trade item. In the 17th century, chartered companies were encouraged by the English, French, and Dutch governments to assist trade and encourage overseas exploration. Those companies that formed for trade with the Indies (see English East India Company; Dutch East India Company; French East India Company) and the New World (see Hudson's Bay Company) had the most wide-reaching influence. Some chartered companies were also involved in the settlement of colonists (see London Company; Plymouth Company). Eventually the development of the modern limited-liability company or corporation led to a decline in the importance of chartered companies.

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Former U.S. telegraph company and contemporary provider of electronic financial transactions. From its foundation in 1851 as a company formed to build a telegraph line from Buffalo, N.Y., to St. Louis, Mo., in 1856 the expanding business was reorganized as the Western Union Telegraph Co. By the end of 1861 Western Union had built the first transcontinental telegraph line. The company introduced singing telegrams in 1933. Western Union continued to grow, absorbing competitors such as Postal Telegraph Inc. in 1943. As telegraphy was superseded by other methods of telecommunication, Western Union diversified into teletypewriter services, money orders, and mailgrams. It launched the telecommunications satellite Westar 1 in 1974 and was operating five satellites by 1982. In 1988 the company was reorganized as Western Union Corp. to handle money transfers and related services. After declaring bankruptcy in 1993, it sold its financial services arm in 1994 to First Financial Management Corp., and in 1995 that company merged with First Data Corp. The renamed Western Union Financial Services, Inc., became a world leader in electronic (including Internet) transactions.

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English trading company chartered by James I in 1606 to colonize the eastern coast of North America. Its shareholders were residents of London. Approximately 105 colonists in three ships reached Virginia in 1607 and founded Jamestown. The company expanded its territory with new charters (1609, 1612) and authorized a two-house legislature (1619), including a House of Burgesses. The colony survived many hardships, but the company was divided by internecine disputes and was dissolved in 1624, whereupon Virginia became a royal colony. Seealso Plymouth Company.

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Major British theatrical company. It was originally attached to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, which opened in 1879 as the site of an annual festival of William Shakespeare's plays. The resident company was called the Shakespeare Memorial Company until 1961, when it was renamed and reorganized into two units, one to play at Stratford and the other to be based in London. The Stratford unit performs plays by Shakespeare and other Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, while the London unit, based at the Barbican arts complex, also performs modern plays and classics of other eras.

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Organization of Englishmen and Virginia colonists, established in 1748 to promote trade with American Indians and secure British control of the Ohio River valley for settlement. Activity in the area claimed by France led to the last French and Indian War (1754). A separate organization, the Ohio Co. of Associates (1786), founded Marietta, Ohio, the first permanent settlement north of the Ohio River.

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(1783–1821) British-Canadian fur-trading company. Its operations were centred around the Lake Superior region and the valleys of the Red, Assiniboine, and Saskatchewan rivers. It later spread north and west to the Arctic and Pacific oceans. When its competitor, the Hudson's Bay Co., established a colony on the Red River (1811–12), North West workers destroyed the colony in the Seven Oaks Massacre. Hudson's Bay workers retaliated by destroying the North West post at Fort Gibraltar. The British government pressured the two companies to merge in 1821 as the Hudson's Bay Co.

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Corporation prominent in Canadian economic and political history. It was incorporated in England (May 2, 1670) to seek the Northwest Passage to the Pacific, to occupy lands adjacent to Hudson Bay, and to carry on commerce. The lands granted to the company, known as Rupert's Land, extended from Labrador west to the Rocky Mountains and from the headwaters of the Red River on the southern Canadian border north to Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay. The company first engaged in the fur trade and established trading posts around Hudson Bay. By 1783 competitors had formed the North West Co., and armed clashes continued until the two companies merged in 1821. The company was given exclusive fur-trade rights until 1858, when the monopoly was not renewed and independent companies entered the fur trade. In 1870 the company sold its territories to the government in exchange for £300,000 and mineral rights to lands around the posts and a fertile portion of western Canada. It remained a large fur-collecting and marketing agency until 1991, with extensive real-estate interests and many department stores.

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Trading company founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1664, and its successors, established to oversee French commerce with India, East Africa, and other territories of the Indian Ocean and the East Indies. In constant competition with the already-established Dutch East India Co., it mounted expensive expeditions that were often harassed by the Dutch. It also suffered in the French economic crash of 1720, and by 1740 the value of its trade with India was half that of the English East India Co. Its monopoly over French trade with India was ended in 1769, and it languished until its disappearance in the French Revolution.

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Trading company founded by the Dutch in 1602 to protect their trade in the Indian Ocean and to assist in their war of independence from Spain. The Dutch government granted it a trade monopoly in the waters between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan. Under the administration of forceful governors-general, it was able to defeat the British fleet and largely displace the Portuguese in the East Indies. It prospered through most of the 17th century but then began to decline as a trading and sea power; it was dissolved in 1799. Seealso East India Co., French East India Co.

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Organization instrumental in colonizing much of the western part of Upper Canada (now Ontario). The company was formed in 1824 to bring settlers to the region. It was directed until 1829 by John Galt (1779–1839), founder of Guelph and father of Alexander Galt. Though the company, chartered with 2.5 million acres, was criticized as a monopoly, it continued to exist until the 1950s.

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or English East India Co.

English chartered company formed for trade with East and Southeast Asia and India, incorporated in 1600. It began as a monopolistic trading body, establishing early trading stations at Surat, Madras (now Chennai), Bombay (Mumbai), and Calcutta (Kolkata). Trade in spices was its original focus; this broadened to include cotton, silk, and other goods. In 1708 it merged with a rival and was renamed the United Co. of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies. Becoming involved in politics, it acted as the chief agent of British imperialism in India in the 18th–19th century, exercising substantial power over much of the subcontinent. The company's activities in China in the 19th century served as a catalyst for the expansion of British influence there; its financing of the tea trade with illegal opium exports led to the first Opium War (1839–42). From the late 18th century it gradually lost both commercial and political control; its autonomy diminished after two acts of Parliament (1773, 1774) established a regulatory board responsible to Parliament, though the act gave the company supreme authority in its domains. It ceased to exist as a legal entity in 1873. See also Dutch East India Co., French East India Co.

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Enterprise formed by John Jacob Astor in 1808 that dominated the U.S. fur trade early in the 19th century. The company, considered the first U.S. business monopoly, absorbed or drove out rivals throughout the central and western U.S. Exploration by its trappers and traders helped open the frontier to settlement. By 1834, when Astor sold his company, it had become the largest commercial organization in the U.S.

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PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, Inc.), formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California that began as a division of Xerox Corporation.

Overview

PARC was founded in 1970, and incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox in 2002. It is best known for inventing laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer graphical user interface (GUI) paradigm, ubiquitous computing, and advancing very-large-scale-integration (VLSI).

Today PARC collaborates with sponsors and clients to discover novel business concepts and transfer scientific findings into production. Current research areas include biomedical technologies, "clean technology", user interface design, sensemaking, ubiquitous computing, large area electronics, and embedded and intelligent systems.

History

PARC's founding director, George Pake, was a physicist, working in the area of nuclear magnetic resonance. Dr. Pake had been serving as provost of Washington University in 1969 when he was approached by Jack Goldman, Chief Scientist at Xerox. The result of their partnership was that Goldman was chiefly responsible for Xerox founding, and generously funding, a second research center, and George Pake was chiefly responsible for choosing PARC's location in Palo Alto — 3,000 miles away from Xerox headquarters.

In retrospect, this turned out to be a good idea, for around 1974, PARC was able to hire many employees of the nearby Augmentation Research Center (founded by Douglas Engelbart) as Engelbart's funding from DARPA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force was drying up.

Much of its success in the computer field was due to the inspired leadership of PARC's Computer Science Laboratory by Bob Taylor, as associate manager (1970–77), and then manager (1977–83),

On January 4, 2002, PARC was incorporated as a subsidiary company of Xerox, called Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated, i.e., PARC. Following the spin-off, PARC remains a wholly owned subsidiary of the Xerox Corporation. As of 2004, Xerox remained the company's largest customer, but PARC had also announced a multi-year relationship with Fujitsu and an entrance into biomedical sciences in partnership with the Scripps Research Institute of La Jolla, CA.

Accomplishments

PARC has been the incubator of many elements of modern computing. Most were included in the Alto, which introduced and unified most aspects of now-standard personal computer usage model: the mouse, computer generated color graphics, a graphical user interface featuring windows and icons, the WYSIWYG text editor, InterPress (a resolution-independent graphical page description language and the precursor to PostScript), Ethernet, and fully formed object-oriented programming in the Smalltalk programming language and integrated development environment. The laser printer was developed at the same time, as an integral part of the overall environment.

Among PARC's distinguished researchers were two Turing Award winners: Butler W. Lampson (1992) and Alan Kay (2003). The ACM Software System Award recognized the Alto system in 1984, Smalltalk in 1987, InterLisp in 1992, and Remote Procedure Call in 1994. Lampson, Kay, Bob Taylor, and Charles P. Thacker received the National Academy of Engineering's prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2004 for their work on the Alto system.

Xerox has been heavily criticized (particularly by business historians) for failing to properly commercialize and profitably exploit PARC's innovations. A favorite example is the GUI, initially developed at PARC for the Alto and then commercialized as the Xerox Star by the Xerox Systems Development Department. Although very significant in terms of its influence on future system design, it is deemed a failure because it only sold approximately 25,000 units. A small group from PARC led by David Liddle and Charles Irby formed Metaphor Computer Systems. They extended the Star desktop concept into an animated graphic and communicating office automation model and sold the company to IBM.

The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was given Apple stock in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product. Much later, in the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit in which Apple accused Microsoft of violating its copyright by appropriating the use of the "look and feel" of the Macintosh GUI, Xerox also sued Apple on the same grounds. The lawsuit was dismissed because Xerox had waited too long to file suit, and the statute of limitations had expired. However, some dispute the degree to which the Apple interface was derived from Xerox designs. Indeed, prior to Apple's visits to PARC, its Macintosh project more closely resembled the Valdocs operating system of the Epson QX-10.

There is no denying the long-term impact of PARC's systems. It took two decades for much of their technology to be equalled or surpassed. The interfaces and technology that PARC pioneered became standards for much of the computing industry, once their merits were widely known.

It is legend that Xerox management consistently failed to see the potential of many of the PARC inventions. While there is some truth to this, it is also an over-simplification. They certainly understood the value of laser printing, and of advances coming from the non-computer-focused part of PARC. Most critics don't realize that computing research was a relatively small part of PARC; there were many researchers working in areas such as materials science at PARC, including pioneers in LCD and optical disc technologies.

The work at PARC in the years since the early 1980s is often overlooked, but major work since then includes ubiquitous computing aka pervasive computing, aspect-oriented programming, and IPv6 to name but a few.

Influential past and present employees

• Stuart Card
• Alan Kay
• Butler Lampson
• Robert Metcalfe
• Thomas P. Moran
• George G. Robertson
• Charles Simonyi

References

Further reading

• Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (HarperCollins, New York, 1999) ISBN 0-88730-989-5
• Douglas K. Smith, Robert C. Alexander, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer (William Morrow, New York, 1988) ISBN 1-58348-266-0
• M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (Viking Penguin, New York, 2001) ISBN 0-670-89976-3
• Howard Rheingold, Tools for Thought (MIT Press, 2000) ISBN 0-262-68115-3

External links

• Oral history interview with Paul A. Strassmann Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
• PARC
• Xerox PARC innovation
• Xerox Star Historical Documents
• MacKiDo article