PAST RESEARCH
XRCE WAS THE FIRST IN THE WORLD TO EXPLORE A NUMBER OF TECHNOLOGIES.
In the 1990’s, we were the first to mix paper and computer screens to form a ‘digital desk’ – one of the first steps towards augmented reality. At that time, we created the concept of meta-search engines that harness the power of multiple search engines and even automatically learn to query online databases. We laid the foundations for today’s ubiquitous computing, by exploring how mobile devices could share hyperlinks and how people could retrieve information on the basis of their context. We also created distributed computing systems and web service architectures which are seeing the light today as the underlying structure for how we are doing business in an online world.We continue to give access to this material as our contribution to the history of computing.
Irene Maxwell, XRCE Communications manager.