The best and most effective photocopiers will feel like they were made yesterday and yet last a very long time, as long as they are carefully maintained and strategically implemented.
This can be a difficult balancing act, not only for buyers and dealers but also for manufacturers, as the highly competitive world of printers and photocopiers has revolutionised and refreshed itself so many times that the world of xerography is almost completely different now than when it first became commercially viable in 1960.
To understand why, it is important to look at both the inventor of the process, the company that brought it to life, and the unusual trajectory the latter had in establishing much of the modern office world without reaping many of the rewards of doing so.
Who Created The First Photocopier?
Up until the invention of xerography by Chester Carlson, photocopying was a relatively complex and messy process, relying on systems such as mimeography and spirit duplicators that needed to dry before they could be used.
Mr Carlson’s invention, first established in 1938 and patented in 1942, was only taken seriously when the Haloid Company bought the exclusive rights to the patents for his invention. Even then, it took over a decade for Haloid to establish the fully automated process needed to make xerographic photocopying work.
However, the Xerox 914, named after the xerography process, was the breakthrough that ushered in the modern photocopying world, capable of using standard paper and able to print 100,000 copies per month and seven copies a minute, far more than any copying system outside of industrial printing presses.
Why Was The First Photocopier Successful?
Unusually, early photocopiers were not only required but they were also admired and respected to a not insignificant degree, and their effect on office and office culture cannot be understated in the slightest.
They were impressively complex but not too difficult to figure out, giving them a level of affection equivalent to cars, where administrative staff and technical engineers alike tended to approach them as a mix between a highly advanced productivity tool and a faithful yet mischievous pet.
Such was its cultural capital that an advert involving a chimpanzee led to complaints from customers who found that co-workers had left bananas on their photocopier as a practical joke.
It led to the use of highlighter pens in office work, as they were not obscured when using a black and white photocopy.
It was one of, if not the most successful, Xerox products in history, and set up the company to be not only one of the most important photocopy and print services companies in the world.
So what went wrong?
What Happened To Xerox?
For two decades, Xerox was the biggest name in photocopying and print services, establishing the model that is still used to this day by many small businesses. Unfortunately, whilst innovation and a narrow focus on their core business made them successful, they lost both of those key elements by the 1980s.
A major turning point was the launch of the Xerox Star, a personal computer that was both far ahead of its time in terms of technology and yet fundamentally misguided in terms of its marketing and sales.
Instead of being a personal computer, it was an extremely expensive interface for laser printers, taking one of the most advanced computer systems of its age and making its only use case document creation.
This would be a difficult sell by itself, but the Star cost $16,000 by itself and generally needed to be bought with a laser printer, print server hardware and at least two additional machines, which meant that the price for businesses was often over $100,000 (closer to £350,000 today).
Whilst groundbreaking today, it would be companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Commodore, Sun Microsystems and Adobe that would benefit rather than Xerox. Steve Jobs of Apple was particularly inspired by a visit to Xerox PARC, and the Star would inspire the Apple Lisa and the Macintosh.
Xerox was also highly distracted, going into telecommunications and even insurance, whilst leaving its print service to wither on the vine as its patents ran out. This allowed much more advanced and cheaper printers and photocopiers to take over the market.
These problems took hold by the 1990s, and the company faced major restructuring by 2001 and has since continued to try to adapt its approach to a market that has passed it by.
Its investment in Lexmark International could potentially signal a revival, but Xerox currently stands as a company that signposted the future but was left behind just as it became the present.