The Xerox 914 was the first successful commercial plain paper copier. Introduced in 1959 by the Haloid/Xerox company, it revolutionized the document-copying industry. The culmination of inventor Chester Carlson's work on the xerographic process, the 914 was fast and economical. The copier was introduced to the public on September 16, 1959, in a demonstration at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York, shown on live television. [1]
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Xerography, a process of producing images using electricity, was invented in 1938 by physicist-lawyer Chester Floyd "Chet" Carlson [2] (1906–1968), [3] and an engineering partner, Otto Kornei. [4] Carlson entered into a research agreement with the Battelle Memorial Institute in 1945, [5] when he and Kornei produced the first operable copy machine. He sold his rights in 1947 to the Haloid Company, a wet-chemical photopaper manufacturer, founded in 1906 in Rochester, New York. [6]
Haloid introduced the first commercial xerographic copier, the Xerox Model A, [7] in 1949. The company had, the previous year, announced the refined development of xerography in collaboration with Battelle Development Corporation, of Columbus, Ohio. Manually operated, it was also known as the Ox Box. [8] An improved version, Camera #1, was introduced in 1950. Haloid was renamed Haloid Xerox in 1958, and, after the instant success of the 914, when the name Xerox soon became synonymous with "copy", would become the Xerox Corporation.
In 1963, Xerox introduced the first desktop copier to make copies on plain paper, the 813. [9] It was designed by Jim Balmer and William H. Armstrong of Armstrong-Balmer & Associates, and won a 1964 Certificate of Design Merit from the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI). Balmer had recently left Harley Earl, Inc., where he had been a designer since 1946, to co-establish Armstrong-Balmer & Associates in 1958. At Earl, Balmer had been involved in the Secretary copy machine designed for Thermofax and introduced by 3M in 1958, and Haloid Xerox had been impressed with the design, engaging Balmer to consult on the final design of the 914.
A year later, in 1964, Balmer worked with Xerox to establish their first internal industrial design group. Among those first design employees were William Dalton and Robert Van Valkinburgh.
The 914 model (so-called because it could copy originals up to 9 inches by 14 inches (229 mm × 356 mm) [10] could make 100,000 copies per month (seven copies per minute). In 1985, the Smithsonian received a Xerox 914, number 517 off the assembly line. It weighs approximately 650 pounds [11] (294 kg) and measures 42" (107 cm) high × 46" (117 cm) wide × 45" (114 cm) deep.
The machine was mechanically complex. It required a large technical support force, [11] and had a tendency to catch fire when overheated. Because of the problem, the Xerox company provided a "scorch eliminator", which was actually a small fire extinguisher, along with the copier. [1] Ralph Nader was among those to complain about the copier fires, reporting that the machine at his office in Washington had caught fire three times in four months. [1] A 1967 article in The New Yorker by John Brooks detailed the relationship between the office secretary and the copier. A secretary he had interviewed for the piece said that a technical representative from Xerox had warned her "not to be afraid of the 914 because the machine would sense her fear and, like a mischievous child, misbehave." [1] Despite these problems, the machine was regarded with affection by its operators, due to it being complex enough to be interesting to use, but without being so complex as to be beyond understanding. [12]
The pricing structure of the machine was designed to encourage customers to rent rather than buy: it could be rented in 1965 for $25 per month, plus 10 cents per copy. There was a meter, which the customer would read to fill out and mail a card to Xerox each month. Its purchase price was $27,500, [11] which was established by the US Government, as they would not rent equipment. The customer also bought paper and toner (ink) at a cost of about 5 cents per copy.
The Xerox 914 was produced between 1960 and 1977. [13] It was introduced to the public on September 16, 1959, in a demonstration at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York, shown on live television. [1] One of the two copiers that were present that day caught fire. [1]
The 914 was one of the most successful Xerox products ever, and was a significant component of Xerox's revenues in the mid-1960s, with one author estimating that the machine accounted for two thirds of the company's revenue in 1965, with income generated of $243M. [11]
The second television commercial produced by Xerox for the 914 featured a trained chimpanzee using the copier. The day after the commercial debuted, the company received calls from angry customers complaining of co-workers leaving bananas on the copier and suggesting that a monkey could do their jobs. The commercial was taken off the air. [1]
The company's subsequent models were the Xerox 710, the Xerox 1000, the Xerox 813 and the Xerox 2400. One writer has assessed that the popularity of the machine has had a number of lasting impacts, such as prompting the introduction of highlighter pens, and university courses switching from reading lists of single chapters from several books, each of which needed to be purchased by the student, to requiring the students to purchase a single compilation of those chapters produced by local copy shops. [13]
The arrival of a Xerox 914 is a cultural signifier in the second season of Mad Men , set in a 1961 Manhattan advertising agency. [14] It is acquired specifically to impress a potential client with how modern the agency is.
In the 2017 film The Post, Daniel Ellsberg, portrayed by Matthew Rhys, is seen using a Xerox 914 to copy the Pentagon Papers .
Xerox Holdings Corporation is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, though it is incorporated in New York with its largest population of employees based around Rochester, New York, the area in which the company was founded. The company purchased Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion in early 2010. As a large developed company, it is consistently placed in the list of Fortune 500 companies.
Rank Xerox Limited was formed in 1956 as a joint venture between the Xerox Corporation of United States and The Rank Organisation of the United Kingdom, to manufacture and market Xerox equipment initially in Europe and later in Africa and Asia. A further joint venture between Rank Xerox and Modi Group in India formed Modi Xerox to manufacture and sell Xerox equipment in the Indian subcontinent.
Xerox art is an art form that began in the 1960s. Prints are created by putting objects on the glass, or platen, of a copying machine and by pressing "start" to produce an image. If the object is not flat, or the cover does not totally cover the object, or the object is moved, the resulting image is distorted in some way. The curvature of the object, the amount of light that reaches the image surface, and the distance of the cover from the glass, all affect the final image. Often, with proper manipulation, rather ghostly images can be made. Basic techniques include: Direct Imaging, the copying of items placed on the platen ; Still Life Collage, a variation of direct imaging with items placed on the platen in a collage format focused on what is in the foreground/background; Overprinting, the technique of constructing layers of information, one over the previous, by printing onto the same sheet of paper more than once; Copy Overlay, a technique of working with or interfering in the color separation mechanism of a color copier; Colorizing, vary color density and hue by adjusting the exposure and color balance controls; Degeneration is a copy of a copy degrading the image as successive copies are made; Copy Motion, the creation of effects by moving an item or image on the platen during the scanning process. Each machine also creates different effects.
Chester Floyd Carlson was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle, Washington.
Xerography is a dry photocopying technique. Originally called electrophotography, it was renamed xerography—from the Greek roots ξηρόςxeros, meaning "dry" and -γραφία-graphia, meaning "writing"—to emphasize that unlike reproduction techniques then in use such as cyanotype, the process of xerography used no liquid chemicals.
Battelle Memorial Institute is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. The institute opened in 1929 but traces its origins to the 1923 will of Ohio industrialist Gordon Battelle which provided for its creation and his mother Annie Maude Norton Battelle who left the bulk of the family fortune to the institute after her death in 1925. Originally focusing on contract research and development work in the areas of metals and material science, Battelle is now an international science and technology enterprise that explores emerging areas of science, develops and commercializes technology, and manages laboratories for customers.
An electrofax was a type of fax. It involved electrostatic printer and copier technology, where an image was formed directly on the paper, instead of first on a drum, then transferred to paper, as it would be in xerography. It was used in the United States from the 1950s through the 1980s.
The Photostat machine, or Photostat, was an early projection photocopier created in the decade of the 1900s by the Commercial Camera Company, which became the Photostat Corporation. The "Photostat" name, which was originally a trademark of the company, became genericized, and was often used to refer to similar machines produced by the RetinalGraph Company.
Albert Blake Dick was a businessman who founded the A. B. Dick Company, a major American copier manufacturer and office supply company of the 20th Century. He coined the word "mimeograph".
Gordon Battelle was the founder of Battelle Memorial Institute, a non-profit independent research and development organization.
A photocopier is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process that uses electrostatic charges on a light-sensitive photoreceptor to first attract and then transfer toner particles onto paper in the form of an image. The toner is then fused onto the paper using heat, pressure, or a combination of both. Copiers can also use other technologies, such as inkjet, but xerography is standard for office copying.
Robert W. Gundlach was an American physicist. He is most noted for his prolific contributions to the field of xerography, specifically the development of the modern photocopier. Gundlach helped transform the Haloid Company, a small photographic firm, into the thriving Xerox Corporation. Over the course of his 42-year career with the company, he contributed over 155 patents, making photocopying technology more affordable and practical. In 1966 Gundlach was named Xerox's first Research Fellow, the highest non-managerial that could be achieved by a Xerox scientist. After his retirement in 1995, he was granted several patents associated with his hobbies, including a snow-making system and a special backpack.
Papert Koenig Lois, also known as PKL, was an advertising agency founded by Fred Papert, Julian Koenig and George Lois in January 1960. Its first office was in the Seagram Building in Park Avenue in Manhattan. Early clients included Peugeot and Xerox. Its campaigns were successful and it was the first such agency to go public.
John H. Dessauer, also known as Hans Dessauer, was a German-American chemical engineer and an innovator in developing xerography. He was instrumental in turning a $7 million company of the 1930s into Xerox, a billion-dollar copier company.
Louise Odes Neaderland is an American photographer, printmaker, book artist and founder of the International Society of Copier Artists (I.S.C.A.) and the I.S.C.A. Quarterly, a collaborative mail, book art, and copy art publication. She was the organizer of ISCAGRAPHICS, a traveling exhibition of xerographic art.
Generative Systems was a program founded by Sonia Landy Sheridan at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1969 to help integrate art with new technologies.
Photoconductive polymers absorb electromagnetic radiation and produce an increase of electrical conductivity. Photoconductive polymers have been used in a wide variety of technical applications such as Xerography (electrophotography) and laser printing. Electrical conductivity is usually very small in organic compounds. Conductive polymers usually have large electrical conductivity. Photoconductive polymer is a smart material based on conductive polymer, and the electrical conductivity can be controlled by the amount of radiation.
Klaus Urbons is a German photographer and xerography printmaker. He is a pioneer and leading figure of copy art in Germany and not only. He founded the Museum für Fotokopie, and is the author and translator of books on the history of Copy Art and photocopiers, as well as a curator and a collector.
IBM Office Products Division (OPD) manufactured and sold copier equipment and supplies from 1970 till IBM withdrew from the copier market in 1988. IBM's decision to compete in this market resulted in the first commercial use of an organic photoconductor now widely used in most photocopiers. It is often held up as an example of a corporate u-turn, where a company rejects a technology and then adopts it. It showed that despite the size of IBM's sales and engineering organisations, this did not guarantee success in every market it chose to compete in. The development effort that resulted in the IBM Copier helped in the development of IBMs first laser printer, the IBM 3800.`
The Xerox 2700 is a discontinued monochrome laser printer from Xerox Corporation. The 2700 was announced in March, 1982, and can print up to 12 pages per minute (PPM), one-sided, on standard A4 or Letter cut-sheet paper. It occupies 5 square feet (0.46 m2) of floor space, and cost $18,995. The 2700 is rated for a print volume of 15,000 pages per month, although some users got up to 100,000 pages.
