[6] Parker joined the Mergenthaler Linotype Company as Jackson Burke's assistant and heir; within two years becoming Director.
Parker was responsible for bringing in internationally known designers such as Matthew Carter, Adrian Frutiger and Hermann Zapf.
[7] In 1981, Parker left Mergenthaler with Matthew Carter, Cherie Cone, and Rob Friedman to co-found Bitstream Inc, a type design company, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Bitstream was highly successful during the 1980s when digital design and production, desktop publishing and personal computer use became virtually universal in the Western World.
With that, Parker had come full circle, he had completed a process that began with Gutenberg's transformation of flexible but laborious calligraphy into modular fonts of movable type, and ended with similar digital modules of expert design that guide all aspects of a whole document's appearance.
[citation needed] In 1994, Parker published evidence that the design of Times New Roman, credited to Stanley Morison in 1931 was based on Starling Burgess' 1904 drawings for Lanston Monotype Foundry.