The History of the Copier

Pure copiers are hard to find in offices today. Multifunction devices have replaced them. It looked different almost 60 years ago. At the time, Xerox presented the world's first standard copier. A little history. Click here to buy Best Copier

In 1906, the Haloid Company was founded in Rochester, USA, specializing in the production of photo papers and profiting from the first boom in the photographic industry. But towards the end of the Second World War, market share declined increasingly. There was a lack of products and concepts to deal with the decline of the photographic industry. The managing director, Joseph C. Wilson, therefore had to reorganize the company. In search of new technologies, in July 1944 he came upon the invention of Chester Carlson for the production of typefaces based on electrical charge differences - the "Xerography". The term is a composite of the Greek words ξηρός (xerós) - dry and γραφή (graphḗ) - script.

The rocky path to success
Carlson owned several patents for his invention, but without commercial success. Remington Rand, RCA, General Electric and IBM waved. Only the research institute Battelle Memorial recognized the potential in 1944 and invested. However, it was still unclear what this technology should be used for. 1947 acquired the Haloid Company, which later in Xerox Corporation renamed, the right to manufacture products based on the Carlson process. The first commercial xerographic copier, Model A, was introduced in 1950.

The first standard Xerox copier
In 1959, the Xerox 914 ran off the line. A copier that was able to create six copies per minute fully automatically. On September 16, 1959, the device was first presented to the public. The success was based among other things on the distribution policy. The Xerox 914 was not sold but rented out. For the monthly base rent of $ 95, the customer could make up to 2,000 copies, each additional cost four cents. This strategy was fundamental to the spectacular growth of an entire industry. The first delivery of the Xerox 914 in March 1960, it was estimated that in three years, about 5,000 units would be sold. By the end of 1962, 10,000 devices had already been delivered.

Significant developments
The integration of basic research and technology marketing was also maintained in the following years. So the company founded the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which produced significant developments such as the first computer mouse or the first commercial laser printer, which was constructed in 1969.

Today, the revolution in digital printing is affecting an entire industry. In 2008 alone, more than 40 billion color pages were printed on Xerox systems, and in many English-speaking countries, Xerox is still often used as a synonym for copiers.

Requirements of the digital workplace
The adaptation of the copier - today it is mostly multifunction devices, enhanced by printing, scanning and faxing - to the requirements of the digital office work world is in full swing. For example, most devices currently offer the ability to print directly from the cloud. With Managed Print Services (MPS), individual print, security, and output settings can be set up and managed globally for all networked devices. In-house or through external IT support.

The future of the copier
However, whether the network connection is sufficient to make multifunctional devices indispensable in the future is questionable. Both the general trend towards a paperless office and a smartphone are making devices increasingly obsolete. For example, the " Adobe Scan " app (iOS, Android) allows you to scan documents using a mobile phone camera. Automatic sharpening and increase in contrast included. Subsequently, the scan is stored as a PDF document in the cloud. The app not only scans, but it also recognizes individual text characters and transforms them into digital text so that it can be further processed in programs such as Word.