--- alias: - SRI - SRI International - Stanford Research Institute category: Private Organization created: 2025-07-22 location: Menlo Park, California start: 1946 summary: Stanford Research Institute is the Menlo Park research institute, founded in 1946 and independent since 1970, that produced Douglas Engelbart's 1968 'Mother of All Demos,' the second ARPANET node, and the U.S. government's classified remote-viewing program under Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. tags: - Organization - SRI - SRIInternational - ARPANET - AugmentationResearchCenter - MenloPark - RemoteViewing updated: 2026-06-20 --- Stanford Research Institute, known since 1977 as SRI International, is a nonprofit contract research institute in Menlo Park, California, founded in 1946 by trustees of Stanford University as a center of innovation serving regional and global industry. It became independent of Stanford in 1970. Over its history SRI developed bank check automation, the location study for Disneyland, Douglas Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center and the 1968 demonstration later called the "Mother of All Demos," the second node of the ARPANET, the Shakey mobile robot, and the speech assistant that became Siri, and it also housed the government-funded parapsychology program run by [Hal Puthoff](/people/hal-puthoff/) and [Russell Targ](/people/russell-targ/).[^1][^2] ### The 1946 Founding and Early Contracts SRI was established in 1946 by [Stanford University](/organizations/stanford-university/) trustees to support the economic development of the American West and to give the university a vehicle for applied, contract-funded research serving industry. In its first decades it became one of the largest contract research organizations in the country, working across the physical sciences, engineering, economics, and operations research. Two early commercial projects became famous. In the 1950s, under contract to Bank of America, SRI engineers built ERMA, the Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting, and the magnetic-ink character recognition (MICR) printing on checks that remains the banking industry's standard for automated check processing.[^1][^2] In April 1953 Walt and Roy Disney hired the SRI economist Harrison Price to study the feasibility and siting of their proposed amusement park; Price's analysis led the Disneys to the Anaheim site where Disneyland opened in 1955, and SRI continued to advise the park as it expanded. Alongside this commercial work the institute took on a large volume of military and government contracts during the Cold War, the source of the controversy that later separated it from the university.[^2] ### The Augmentation Research Center In 1957 the electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart joined SRI, where he pursued a conviction, set out in his October 1962 report *Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework*, that computers should be built to extend rather than replace human reasoning. That report, prepared for the [U.S. Air Force](/organizations/us-air-force/) Office of Scientific Research, drew the attention of J.C.R. Licklider, the first director of the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Defense Department's [Advanced Research Projects Agency](/organizations/advanced-research-projects-agency/) (ARPA), who funded Engelbart's new Augmentation Research Center in early 1963; [NASA](/organizations/nasa/) and ARPA support expanded after Robert Taylor took up the cause, first at NASA and then as IPTO director from 1965.[^3][^4] The center built the oN-Line System, or NLS, a working interactive computing environment running on an SDS 940 timesharing computer that combined the mouse (which Engelbart invented and patented), a chord keyset, bit-mapped screens, hierarchical document outlines, hypertext links, on-screen windows, and real-time collaborative editing among networked terminals. Engelbart's team included researchers such as Bill English, who built the first mouse prototype, and the future Xerox PARC and Apple lineage of graphical-interface design traces directly to their work.[^3][^4] ### The Mother of All Demos On December 9, 1968, Engelbart presented NLS in a ninety-minute live demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, sitting on stage with a mouse and keyset while his team at SRI in Menlo Park appeared on a large projected screen over a leased microwave and video link. The session showed the mouse, hypertext, on-screen video conferencing, shared-screen collaborative editing, and windowed text, most of which would not reach ordinary computer users for another two decades. The journalist Steven Levy later popularized the name "the Mother of All Demos" for the event, which the Computer History Museum has called a foundational moment of interactive computing.[^3][^5] The demonstration was staged with the help of the countercultural impresario [Stewart Brand](/people/stewart-brand/), who had produced Ken Kesey's Trips Festival in San Francisco in 1966 and who launched the [Whole Earth Catalog](/concepts/whole-earth-catalog/) in the same autumn of 1968. Brand operated cameras and helped coordinate the video link from SRI, and the team used the Stanford Research Institute campus, a leased commercial video projector, and a homemade modem-and-microwave setup to carry the live images of the Menlo Park computer to the conference hall.[^5] ### The Second Node of the ARPANET When ARPA built the ARPANET, the packet-switched network that became the technical ancestor of the internet, SRI was chosen as the second of its original four nodes, after the [University of California](/organizations/university-of-california/), Los Angeles. On October 29, 1969, a UCLA student programmer, Charley Kline, attempted to log in to Engelbart's SDS 940 at SRI over the new network; the system crashed after transmitting the first two letters of "login," so the first message ever sent across the ARPANET was the word "lo," with a full connection achieved about an hour later.[^6] SRI's role in the early network extended past the first connection. From 1972 the institute operated the Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET, the directory and registration service that maintained the master list of host names and addresses and the official documents of the growing network; Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler directed the NIC group at SRI from the early 1970s until 1989, and her team maintained the host table and the early domain registries that preceded the modern Domain Name System.[^6] ### The 1970 Separation and Later Work During the Vietnam War, student activists at Stanford protested the university's ties to SRI, whose contracts included classified military and counterinsurgency research, arguing that the relationship made the university part of the military-industrial complex. After demonstrations in the spring of 1969, including a sit-in at the SRI building and tear-gassing of protesters near the site in May 1969, the Stanford trustees voted to sever the institute, and SRI became a fully independent nonprofit in 1970, taking the name SRI International in 1977.[^1][^2] Its Artificial Intelligence Center, founded in 1966, built Shakey, the first mobile robot able to reason about its own actions, between 1966 and 1972; decades later the center's DARPA-funded CALO project spun off the company Siri in 2007, which Apple acquired in 2010.[^2] ### The Remote-Viewing Program From 1972 to about 1995 SRI hosted a classified, government-funded parapsychology research program investigating "[remote viewing](/concepts/remote-viewing/)," the claimed ability to perceive distant or hidden targets by extrasensory means, conducted for clients including the [Central Intelligence Agency](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) and the [Defense Intelligence Agency](/organizations/defense-intelligence-agency/). The physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff ran the SRI experiments, working with subjects such as the artist [Ingo Swann](/people/ingo-swann/), the former police officer [Pat Price](/people/pat-price/), and the celebrity psychic [Uri Geller](/people/uri-geller/), and the program was one strand of the broader military and intelligence effort later consolidated under the name [STARGATE PROJECT](/programs/stargate-project/).[^7][^8] SRI developed several of the core techniques of the field, including [Coordinate Remote Viewing](/concepts/coordinate-remote-viewing/) (CRV) and the use of outbounder teams sent to randomly chosen locations for a viewer to describe. The institute's prestige and its heavy reliance on classified government contracts made it a fitting home for the sensitive work, and Puthoff and Targ published some of their results in reputable scientific journals, lending the field a measure of credibility that helped persuade parts of the intelligence community that remote viewing might serve as an intelligence-gathering tool.[^8] [^1]: "History, Leadership, and Values," About SRI International, on the 1946 founding by Stanford trustees as a center of innovation, the 1970 separation from Stanford, the ERMA and MICR banking work, and the institute's scale. https://www.sri.com/about-us/ [^2]: "SRI International," institutional overview, on the 1946 founding to support West Coast economic development, the 1953 to 1955 Disneyland feasibility study by Harrison Price, the 1970 separation amid Vietnam-era protests over DARPA-funded military research, the 1977 rename to SRI International, Shakey the robot (1966 to 1972), and the Siri spin-off (2007) acquired by Apple (2010). [^3]: "Augmentation Research Center" and "Foundation of Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center," History of Information, on Engelbart joining SRI in 1957, the October 1962 report *Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework* for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Licklider's early-1963 ARPA funding, Robert Taylor's NASA and ARPA support, and the NLS system with the mouse, keyset, hypertext, and collaborative editing. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3136 [^4]: Markoff, John, and contemporary accounts of the Augmentation Research Center, on Bill English building the first mouse prototype and the lineage from NLS to Xerox PARC and the graphical user interface; and "How Douglas Engelbart Invented the Future," Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/douglas-engelbart-invented-future-180967498/ [^5]: "The Mother of All Demos," accounts of the December 9, 1968 demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, the mouse, hypertext, video conferencing, and shared-screen editing, and Stewart Brand's role in staging and filming it; "Net@50," Computer History Museum. https://computerhistory.org/blog/net-50-did-engelbart-s-mother-of-all-demos-launch-the-connected-world/ [^6]: "Charley Kline Sends the First Message Over the ARPANET," History of Information, on SRI as the second ARPANET node, the October 29, 1969 transmission of "lo," and the crash; and "Elizabeth J. Feinler," on her direction of SRI's Network Information Center for the ARPANET from the early 1970s until 1989 and her maintenance of the host table and early registries. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=1108 [^7]: Standard accounts of the SRI remote-viewing program, 1972 to about 1995, funded by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and run by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff with subjects including Ingo Swann and Pat Price, as one strand of the program later known as Project Stargate. See the vault pages on Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, and Project Stargate. [^8]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997, on the SRI psychic-research program, the subjects including Ingo Swann, Pat Price, and Uri Geller, the development of Coordinate Remote Viewing and outbounder protocols, and the publication of results in scientific journals.