@cloudguy I'm more or less certain that NLS (oNLine System) from Doug Engelbart's ARC (Augmentation Research Center) group at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) already demonstrated copying and pasting of text in the 1968 "Mother of All Demos".
However, it is true, if perhaps lesser known, that Xerox's PARC had a cross-licensing arrangement with SRI and SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab).
Lamentably, due to Hollywood BS such as Pirates of Silicon Valley, many (almost all?) in pop culture erroneously attribute inventions to PARC which were previously invented under Engelbart's team and elsewhere.
For example even earlier, Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad (movie clip below from 1962, doctoral thesis completed in 1963) had copying and pasting graphical objects and object inheritance, a clip here narrated by Alan Kay (who was a student of Sutherland and also later worked at PARC):
Also, the Doug's use of the term "bug" where most today would use the term "cursor" or "pointer".
One of the challenges when inventing new technologies is the naming of such things. Particularly as language changes and evolves over time; so how new technologies are later known within popular culture is often divergent from how the inventors may have referred to such things initially.
In some interview (sadly, not online anymore as far as I know and I am not sure what hard drive I copied it to nor where it may be in my storage unit) which Robert X. Cringely did with Doug Engelbart was another example. If I recall correctly, Doug said something to the effect of: "NLS had links too, but we just called them 'links' there was nothing hyper about them." ;)
Yeah it's interesting. There's another moment where he refers to the mouse, then says something like: I don't know why we call it a mouse. We should probably change that.
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