The Alto came out of Xerox's original Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), known for giving its research groups substantial freedom and generous funding, and was one of the most innovative computers ever designed. Often called the first personal computer or workstation, it used bit-mapped graphics, a mouse, menus, icons and other features that would prove to be the basic technologies of today's PCs. The designers also created the Ethernet local area networking protocol to link Altos within PARC.