Augmentation Research Center - Definition and Overview

Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center (ARC) was founded by electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing. The main product to come out of ARC was the revolutionary oN-Line System, better known by its odd acronym, NLS.

Dr. Engelbart recruited brilliant coworkers and ran the organization until the late 1970s, when funding and support for the laboratory dissipated. Eventually, SRI's management arranged for Engelbart to be fired from the lab which he had created.

The complex story of the rise and fall of ARC has been thoroughly documented in a book by sociologist Thierry Bardini. It was also indirectly covered in many other books about Xerox PARC, since that is where many ARC employees later fled to (and brought some of Engelbart's ideas with them).

A number of early participants moved on to brilliant careers at Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, and other leading computer companies.