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>a driver for a dodgy printer

You mean the Mergenthaler Linotron 202? That cost nearly $60,000 but they considered it the lowest price high-resolution phototypesetter available in 1978?

Yeah, and it was still a huge pile of crap that required constant TLC just to not break. Printers never change.

I think there’s a huge argument here for what their research inspired others to do as well.

Just the small work they did on supporting mice so early on (third system to integrate a mouse?) was pretty massive for changing the way we interact and deal with computers.

I know the mouse concept is in “the mother of all demos” but actually first principle integration of the mouse into the system probably belongs to PARC.

Trackball predates the mouse though and things wouldn't have been very different if we only had them.

Light pens are old, too, and with touch screens we are going back to that, without the light of the pen needed.

If their employees got 9 Nobel Prizes among them, surely we can wave away some fails that happened along the way.