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Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the
photocopier A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...
market, beginning with the introduction of the Xerox 914 in 1959, so much so that the word ''xerox'' is commonly used as a synonym for ''photocopy''. Xerox is headquartered in
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, though it is incorporated in New York with its largest group of employees based around
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, the area in which the company was founded. As a large developed company, it is consistently placed in the list of
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companies. The company purchased Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion in early 2010. On December 31, 2016, Xerox separated its business process service operations, essentially those operations acquired with the purchase of Affiliated Computer Services, into a new publicly traded company, Conduent. Xerox focuses on its document technology and document outsourcing business, and traded on the
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from 1961 to 2021, and the
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since 2021. Researchers at Xerox and its Palo Alto Research Center invented several important elements of
personal computing A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as word processing, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and gaming. Personal computers ar ...
, such as the
desktop metaphor In computing, the desktop metaphor is an interface metaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users interact more easily with the computer. The desktop metaphor treats the computer monitor as if it is ...
GUI, the
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and desktop computing. The concepts were adopted by
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and later
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.


History

Xerox was founded in 1906 in Rochester, New York, as the Haloid Photographic Company.Online Fact Book: Xerox at a Glance
, xerox.com. Article retrieved December 13, 2006.
It manufactured photographic paper and equipment. In 1938, Chester Carlson, a physicist working independently, invented a process for printing images using an electrically charged photoconductor-coated metal plate and dry powder "toner". However, it would take more than 20 years of refinement before the first automated machine to make copies was commercialized, using a document feeder, scanning light, and a rotating drum. Joseph C. Wilson, credited as the "founder of Xerox", took over Haloid from his father. He saw the promise of Carlson's invention and, in 1946, signed an agreement to develop it as a commercial product. Wilson remained as President/CEO of Xerox until 1967 and served as chairman until his death in 1971. Looking for a term to differentiate its new system, Haloid hired a Greek scholar at
Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...
and coined the term xerography from two Greek roots meaning "dry writing". Haloid changed its name to Haloid Xerox in 1958 and then Xerox Corporation in 1961. Before releasing the 914, Xerox tested the market by introducing a developed version of the prototype hand-operated equipment known as the Flat-plate 1385. The 1385 was not actually a viable copier because of its slowness of operation. As a consequence, it was sold as a platemaker for the Addressograph-Multigraph Multilith 1250 and related sheet-fed offset printing presses in the offset lithography market. It was little more than a high quality, commercially available plate camera mounted as a horizontal rostrum camera, complete with photo-flood lighting and timer. The glass film/plate had been replaced with a selenium-coated aluminum plate. Clever electrics turned this into a quick-developing and reusable substitute for film. A skilled user could produce fast, paper and metal printing plates of a higher quality than almost any other method. Having started as a supplier to the offset lithography duplicating industry, Xerox now set its sights on capturing some of offset's market share. The 1385 was followed by the first automatic xerographic printer, the Copyflo, in 1955. The Copyflo was a large microfilm printer that could produce positive prints on roll paper from any type of microfilm negative. Following the Copyflo, the process was scaled down to produce the 1824 microfilm printer. At about half the size and weight, this still sizable machine printed onto hand-fed, cut-sheet paper which was pulled through the process by one of two gripper bars. A scaled-down version of this gripper feed system was to become the basis for the 813 desktop copier.


Xerox 914

The company came to prominence in 1959 with the introduction of the Xerox 914, "the most successful single product of all time". The 914, the first plain paper
photocopier A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...
, was developed by Carlson and John H. Dessauer; it was so popular that by the end of 1961 Xerox had almost $60 million in revenue. The product was sold by an innovative ad campaign showing that even monkeys could make copies at the touch of a button - simplicity would become the foundation of Xerox products and user interfaces. Revenues leaped to over $500 million by 1965.


Xeronic Computer Printer

In 1956, Haloid formed a joint venture in the UK with Rank Organisation whose Rank Precision Industries Ltd. subsidiary was charged with anglicising the US products. Rank's Precision Industries went on to develop the Xeronic computer printer and Rank Data Systems Ltd was set up to bring the product to market. It used
cathode-ray tube A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a ...
s to generate the characters and forms that could be overlaid from microfilm images. Initially, they planned for the
Ferranti Ferranti International PLC or simply Ferranti was a UK-based electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century, from 1885 until its bankruptcy in 1993. At its peak, Ferranti was a significant player in power grid system ...
and AEI computer companies to sell the Xeronic as an on-line peripheral, but due to interface problems, Rank switched to a magnetic tape off-line technique. In 1962, Lyons Computers Ltd. placed an order for use with their LEO III computer, and the printer was delivered in 1964. It printed 2,888 lines per minute, slower than the target of 5,000 lpm.


1960s

In the 1960s, Xerox held a dominant position in the
photocopier A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...
market. In 1960, a xerography research facility called the Wilson Center for Research and Technology was opened in Webster, New York. In 1961, the company changed its name to Xerox Corporation. Xerox common stock (XRX) was listed on the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
in 1961 and on the Chicago Stock Exchange in 1990. In 1963, Xerox introduced the Xerox 813, the first desktop plain-paper copier, realizing Carlson's vision of a copier that could fit on anyone's office desk. Ten years later, in 1973, a basic, analogue, color copier, based on the 914, followed. The 914 itself was gradually sped up to become the 420 and 720. The 813 was similarly developed into the 330 and 660 products and, eventually, also the 740 desktop microfiche printer. Xerox's first foray into duplicating, as distinct from copying, was with the Xerox 2400, introduced in 1966. The model number denoted the number of prints produced in an hour. Although not as fast as
offset printing Offset printing is a common printing technique in which the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithography, lithographic process, which ...
, this machine introduced the industry's first automatic document feeder, paper slitter and perforator, and collator (sorter). This product was soon sped up by fifty percent to become the Xerox 3600 Duplicator. Meanwhile, a small lab team was borrowing copiers and modifying them. The lab was developing what it called long distance xerography (LDX) to connect a modified 813 copier to a CRT based scanner using a special service (TELPAK) of the public telephone network, so that a document scanned on one machine would print out on the other. The LDX system was introduced in 1964, followed in 1966 by the Magnafax Telecopier, a much smaller, slower and less expensive version that acoustically coupled to a desk phone. However, fax machines would not become a truly mainstream device until the 1980s. In 1968, C. Peter McColough, a longtime executive of Haloid and Xerox, became Xerox's CEO. The same year, the company consolidated its headquarters at Xerox Square in downtown
Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...
, with its 30-story Xerox Tower. Xerox embarked on a series of acquisitions. It purchased University Microfilms International in 1962, Electro-Optical Systems in 1963, and R. R. Bowker in 1967. In 1969, Xerox acquired Scientific Data Systems (SDS), which it renamed the Xerox Data Systems (XDS) division and which produced the
Sigma Sigma ( ; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; ) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used as an operator ...
line and its successor XDS 5xx series of
mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
s in the 1960s and 1970s. Xerox sold XDS to
Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...
in 1975. File:Xerox Tower.JPG, Xerox Tower in
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, served as headquarters from 1968 to 1969. File:Xeroxheadquarters.jpg,
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served as headquarters from 1969 to 2007. File:Xerox Henrietta facility.JPG, Former manufacturing facility in
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, constructed in the 1960s and sold to Harris RF Communications in 2010 File:XeroxTower-DLighting.jpg, Xerox Canada Head Office at North American Life Centre (Xerox Tower),
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,
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File:XeroxTrainingCenter2.jpg, Xerox Training Center


1970s

Archie McCardell was named president of the company in 1971. During his tenure, Xerox introduced the Xerox 6500, its first color copier. During McCardell's reign at Xerox, the company announced record
revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...
s,
earnings {{Short description, Financial term Earnings are the net benefits of a corporation's operation. Earnings is also the amount on which corporate tax is due. For an analysis of specific aspects of corporate operations several more specific terms are u ...
and profits in 1973, 1974, and 1975. John Carrol became a backer, later spreading the company throughout North America. In the mid-1970s, Xerox introduced the Xerox 9200 Duplicating System. Originally designed to be sold to print shops to increase their productivity, it was twice a fast as the 3600 duplicator at two impressions per second (7200 per hour). It was followed by the 9400, which did auto-duplexing, and then by the 9500, which was which added variable zoom reduction and electronic lightness/darkness control. In a 1975 Super Bowl commercial for the 9200, Xerox debuted an advertising campaign featuring Brother Dominic, a monk who used the 9200 system to save decades of manual copying. Before it was aired, there was some concern that the commercial would be denounced as blasphemous. However, when the commercial was screened for the Archbishop of New York, he found it amusing and gave it his blessing. Dominic, portrayed by Jack Eagle, became the face of Xerox into the 1980s. Following these years of record profits, in 1975, Xerox resolved an anti-trust suit with the United States
Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) United States antitrust law, antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. It ...
(FTC), which at the time was under the direction of Frederic M. Scherer. The Xerox
consent decree A consent decree is an agreement or settlement that resolves a dispute between two parties without admission of guilt (in a criminal case) or liability (in a civil case). Most often it is such a type of settlement in the United States. The ...
resulted in the forced licensing of the company's entire
patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
portfolio, mainly to Japanese competitors. Within four years of the consent decree, Xerox's share of the U.S. copier market dropped from nearly 100% to less than 14%. In 1979, Xerox purchased Western Union International (WUI) as the basis for its proposed ''Xerox Telecommunications Network'' (XTEN) for local-loop communications. However, after three years, in 1982, the company decided the idea was a mistake and sold its assets to MCI at a loss.


1980s

David T. Kearns, a Xerox executive since 1971, took over as CEO in 1982. The company was revived in the 1980s and 1990s, through improvement in quality design and realignment of its product line. Attempting to expand beyond copiers, in 1981 Xerox introduced a line of electronic memory typewriters, the ''Memorywriter'', which gained 20% market share, mostly at the expense of IBM. In 1980, Xerox acquired Kurzweil Computer Products, a pioneering manufacturer of flatbed scanners, from
Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist, and inventor. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), speech synthesis, text-to-speech synthesis, spee ...
. It later acquired Datacopy, another pioneer in the image scanner market, for $31 million in 1986. In 1983, Xerox bought Crum & Forster, an insurance company, and formed Xerox Financial Services (XFS) in 1984. In 1985, Xerox sold all of its publishing subsidiaries including University Microfilms and R. R. Bowker. The 6500 color copier was also introduced in 1986. The first one was sold in Philadelphia by Jack Schneider. In 1989, Xerox won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Business Products and Systems.


1990s

In 1990, Paul Allaire, a Xerox executive since 1966, succeeded David Kearns, who had reached mandatory retirement age. Allaire disentangled Xerox from the financial services industry. The development of digital photocopiers in the 1990s and a revamp of the entire product range again gave Xerox a technical lead over its competitors. In 1990, Xerox released the DocuTech Production Publisher Model 135, ushering in print-on-demand. Digital photocopiers were essentially high-end laser printers with integrated scanners. Soon, additional features such as network printing and faxing were added to many models, known as multi-function machines, or just MFMs, which were able to be attached to computer networks. Xerox worked to turn its product into a service, providing a complete document service to companies including supply, maintenance, configuration, and user support. To reinforce this image, the company introduced a corporate signature in 1994, The Document Company, above its main logo and introduced a red digital X. The digital X symbolized the transition of documents between the paper and digital worlds. In April 1999, Allaire was succeeded by Richard Thoman, who had been brought in from
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
in 1997 as president. The first "outsider" to head Xerox, Thoman resigned in 2000.


2000s

After Thoman's resignation, Allaire again resumed the position of CEO and served until the appointment of Anne M. Mulcahy, another long-term Xerox executive. Xerox's turnaround was largely led by Mulcahy, who was appointed president in May 2000, CEO in August 2001 and chairman in January 2002. She launched an aggressive turnaround plan that returned Xerox to full-year profitability by the end of 2002, along with decreasing debt, increasing cash, and continuing to invest in research and development. In 2000, Xerox acquired
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color printing and imaging division in Wilsonville, Oregon, for US$925 million. This led to the current Xerox Phaser line of products as well as Xerox solid ink printing technology. In September 2004, Xerox celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Xerox 914. More than 200,000 units were made around the world between 1959 and 1976, the year production of the 914 was stopped. Today, the 914 is part of
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as an artifact in the
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. In November 2006, Xerox completed the acquisition of XMPie. XMPie, a provider of software for cross-media, variable data one-to-one marketing, was the first acquisition of Xerox to remain independent entity, as a Xerox company and not a division, and to this day is led by its original founder Jacob Aizikowitz. Xerox headquarters moved from
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, to Norwalk in October 2007. In October 2008, Xerox Canada Ltd. was named one of Greater Toronto's Top Employers by Mediacorp Canada Inc., which was announced by the ''
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'' newspaper. On July 1, 2009, Ursula Burns succeeded Anne Mulcahy as CEO of Xerox. Burns was the first
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woman to head a company of that size. On September 28, 2009, Xerox announced the intended acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services, a services and
outsourcing Outsourcing is a business practice in which companies use external providers to carry out business processes that would otherwise be handled internally. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another ...
company, for $6.4 billion. The acquisition was completed in February 2010. Xerox said it paid 4.935 Xerox shares and $18.60 cash for each share of ACS, totaling $6.4 billion, or $63.11 a share for the company.


2010s

In May 2011, Xerox acquired NewField IT for an undisclosed sum. In December 2013, Xerox sold its Wilsonville, Oregon solid ink product design, engineering and chemistry group and related assets previously acquired from
Tektronix Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment. Originally an independent c ...
to 3D Systems for $32.5 million in cash. In December 2014, Xerox sold the IT outsourcing business it had acquired in 2009 from Affiliated Computer Services to Atos for $1.05 billion. This move was taken due to the relatively slow growth of this business relative to some other Xerox units. In January 2016, Xerox—reportedly under pressure from activist shareholder and corporate raider
Carl Icahn Carl Celian Icahn (; born February 16, 1936) is an American businessman and investor. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a public company and diversified conglomerate holding company based in Sunny Isles Beach, ...
—announced that by the end of the year it would spin off its business services unit, largely made up of Affiliated Computer Services, into its own publicly traded company. The name and management of the new company had not been determined at the time of the announcement. Icahn would appoint three members of the new company's
board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...
, and he would choose a person to advise its search for a CEO. In June, the company announced that the document management business would retain the name Xerox and the new business services company would be named Conduent. It also announced that Ashok Vemuri would serve as Conduent's CEO and that Icahn would control three seats on the new company's board. It continued to seek a CEO for Xerox; in May, Burns announced her intention to step down as CEO but continue as chairman of the document management business. In June 2016, the company announced that Jeff Jacobson would become the new CEO following the completion of the company's planned separation. This became effective in January 2017. On January 31, 2018, Xerox announced that
Fujifilm , trading as , or simply Fuji, is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, operating in the areas of photography, optics, Office supplies, office and Biomedical engine ...
had agreed to acquire a 50.1% controlling stake in the company for US$6.1 billion, which was to be combined into their existing joint venture Fuji Xerox (having a value of $18 billion post-acquisition). On May 1, 2018, it was announced that chairman Robert Keegan and CEO Jeff Jacobson and four other directors would resign as part of a deal with investors
Carl Icahn Carl Celian Icahn (; born February 16, 1936) is an American businessman and investor. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a public company and diversified conglomerate holding company based in Sunny Isles Beach, ...
and Darwin Deason, who had mounted a proxy fight to oppose the Fujifilm deal. On May 4, Xerox backed away from the deal after stipulations about ceasing litigation were not met. Icahn and Deason responded with an open letter to shareholders blaming the board and management. On May 13 a new deal was reached that additionally cancelled the Fujifilm transaction. In November 2019, Xerox began to pursue a
hostile takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (law), company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are publicly listed, in contrast t ...
of PC and printer manufacturer HP Inc., declaring its intent to "engage directly" with shareholders after HP rejected two unsolicited bids for the company. Xerox stated in January 2020 that it would pursue the replacement of HP's board. HP criticized the proposed purchase as a "flawed value exchange" based on "overstated synergies", and instituted a
shareholder rights plan A shareholder rights plan, colloquially known as a "poison pill", is a type of defensive tactic used by a corporation's board of directors against a takeover. In the field of mergers and acquisitions, shareholder rights plans were devised in the e ...
and other measures designed to quell the bid, which the company believed was being orchestrated by Icahn.


2020s

In February 2020, Xerox announced the hiring of Tali Rosman as VP of Xerox's 3D business. She joined Xerox from NICE Ltd., where she was vice president and head of business operations for the Americas. She would report to CTO Naresh Shanker. On March 5, HP revealed that its board of directors had unanimously declined Xerox's $24 a share cash-and-stock offer. On March 13, Xerox revealed that it was putting its campaign to acquire HP on hold by postponing additional presentations, interviews with the press and meetings with HP shareholders. Xerox vice chairman and chief executive John Visentin cited the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
as a main reason and said, "In light of the escalating Covid-19 pandemic, Xerox needs to prioritize health and safety of its employees, customers, partners and affiliates over and above all considerations, including its proposal to acquire HP." On March 31, 2020, Xerox canceled its $24 a share offer. In September 2020, Xerox opened its North Carolina Center of Excellence in Cary, North Carolina. The center includes the research and development operations, the 3-D printing lab, and th eXerox Digital eXperience IT organization. In September 2021, Xerox announced it was transferring its stock ticker from the
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to the
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after 60 years. The transfer went into effect on September 21, 2021. In December 2024, Xerox announced an agreement to acquire Lexmark International, a Chinese-owned maker of printers and printing software based in
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, in a $1.5 billion deal.


Digital printing

The laser printer was invented in 1969 by Xerox researcher Gary Starkweather by modifying a Xerox 7000 copier. Xerox management was afraid the product version of Starkweather's invention, which became the 9700, would negatively impact their copier business so the innovation sat in limbo until IBM launched the 3800 laser printer in 1976. The first commercial non-impact printer was the Xerox 1200, introduced in 1973, based on the 3600 copier. It had an optical character generator designed by optical engineer Phil Chen. It was used in
mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
environments for large-volume printing for business applications. In 1977, after IBM had produced the first laser printer, the Xerox 9700 was introduced. It was also used in mainframe environments and could handle even larger amounts of paper and printing. Laser printing eventually became a multibillion-dollar business for Xerox. In the late 1970s, Xerox introduced the Xerox 350 color slide machine. This product allowed the customer to create digital word and graphic 35-millimetre slides. Many of the concepts used in today's photo editing programs were pioneered with this technology. In 1980, Xerox announced the 5700 laser printer, a much smaller version of their 9700, but with touch-screen capabilities and multiple media input (word processing disks, IBM magcards, etc.) and printer 'finishing' options. This product was allegedly never intended to make the commercial markets due to its development cost, but rather to show the innovation of Xerox. It took off with many customers, but was soon replaced with the smaller and lower cost Xerox 2700 Distributed Electronic Printer offering in 1982.


Palo Alto Research Center

In 1970, under company president C. Peter McColough, Xerox opened the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, known as Xerox PARC. The facility developed many modern computing technologies such as the
graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...
(GUI),
laser printing Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a Electric charge, negatively charged cylinder call ...
,
WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...
text editors, and
Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...
. From these inventions, Xerox PARC created the Xerox Alto in 1973, a small minicomputer similar to a modern
workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...
or
personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
. This machine can be considered the first true Personal Computer, given its versatile combination of a cathode-ray-type screen, mouse-type pointing device, and a QWERTY-type alphanumeric keyboard. But the Alto was never commercially sold, as Xerox itself could not see the sales potential of it. It was, however, installed in Xerox's own offices, worldwide and those of the US Government and military, who could see the potential. Within these sites the individual workstations were connected together by Xerox's own unique LAN, The Ethernet. Data was sent around this system of heavy, yellow, low loss coaxial cable using the packet data system. In addition, PARC also developed one of the earliest
internetworking Internetworking is the practice of interconnecting multiple computer networks. Typically, this enables any pair of hosts in the connected networks to exchange messages irrespective of their hardware-level networking technology. The resulting sys ...
protocol suites, the PARC Universal Packet (PUP). In 1979, Steve Jobs made a deal with Xerox's venture capital division: He would let them invest US$1 million (equivalent to $ million in ) in exchange for a look at the technology they were working on. Jobs and the others saw the commercial potential of the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, and Pointing device) system and redirected development of the Apple Lisa to incorporate these technologies. Jobs is quoted as saying: "They just had no idea what they had." In 1980, Jobs invited several key PARC researchers to join his company so that they could fully develop and implement their ideas. In 1981, Xerox released a system similar to the Alto, the Xerox Star. It was the first commercial system to incorporate technologies that have subsequently become commonplace in personal computers, such as a bitmapped display, window-based GUI, mouse,
Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...
networking,
file server In computing, a file server (or fileserver) is a computer attached to a network that provides a location for shared disk access, i.e. storage of computer files (such as text, image, sound, video) that can be accessed by workstations within a co ...
s, print servers, and
e-mail Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
. The Xerox Star and its successor the
Xerox Daybreak Xerox Daybreak (also Xerox 6085 PCS, Xerox 1186) is a workstation computer marketed by Xerox from 1985 to 1989. Overview Daybreak is the final release in the D* (pronounced D-Star) series of machines, some of which share the Wildflower CPU desig ...
, despite their technological breakthroughs, did not sell well due to its high price, retailing at US$16,000 per unit (). A typical Xerox Star-based office, complete with network and printers, would have cost US$100,000 (). In the mid-1980s,
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
considered buying Xerox; however, a deal was never reached. Apple instead bought rights to the Alto GUI and adapted it into a more affordable personal computer, aimed towards the business and education markets. The
Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
was released in 1984, and it was the first personal computer to popularize the GUI and mouse among the public. In 2002, PARC was spun off into an independent wholly-owned subsidiary of Xerox. In April 2023, Xerox announced that it would donate the lab and its related assets to
SRI International SRI International (SRI) is a nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States. It was established in 1946 by trustees of Stanford Univer ...
. As part of the deal, Xerox would keep most of the patent rights inside PARC, and benefit from a preferred research agreement with SRI/PARC.


Chief executives


Products and services

Xerox manufactures and sells office equipment including scanners, printers, and multifunction systems that scan, print, copy, email and fax. These model families include WorkCentre, Phaser, and ColorQube. For the graphic communications and commercial print industries, the Xerox product portfolio includes high-volume, digital printing presses, production printers, and wide format printers that use xerographic and inkjet printing technologies. Products include the iGen, Nuvera, DocuPrint, and Impika series, as well as the Trivor, iPrint, and Rialto (inkjet) machines.


Corporate structure

Although Xerox is a global
brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...
, it maintained a joint venture from 1962 to 2021, Fuji Xerox, with Japanese photographic firm Fuji Photo Film Co. to develop, produce and sell in the Asia-Pacific region. Fujifilm announced in January 2020 that it would not renew its technology agreement with Xerox, with Fuji Xerox being renamed to Fujifilm Business Innovation in April 2021. Xerox India, formerly Modi Xerox, is Xerox's Indian subsidiary derived from a joint venture formed between Dr. Bhupendra Kumar Modi and Rank Xerox in 1983. Xerox obtained a majority stake in 1999 and aims to buy out the remaining shareholders. NewField IT is a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox that implements and supports third-party software for MPS providers.


Rank Xerox

The European company Rank Xerox, originally a
joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...
between Xerox and the British company
The Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation (founded as the J. Arthur Rank Organisation) is a British entertainment Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1937 by industrialist J. Arthur Rank. It quickly became the largest and most vertical integration, ve ...
, later extended to Asia and Africa, has been fully owned by Xerox Corporation since 1997. The Rank Xerox name was discontinued following the buyout, and the Rank Xerox Research Centre was renamed to the Xerox Research Centre Europe. The laboratory, based in France, was acquired by South Korean IT company Naver Corporation in 2017, and later became Naver Labs Europe.


Sponsorship

Xerox now sponsors the Factory Ducati Team in the World Superbike Championship, under the name of the "Xerox Ducati". In November 2024,
Aston Martin F1 Team Aston Martin is a British car manufacturer that has participated in Formula One in various forms and is currently represented by a team named as Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team. The company first participated in Formula One during the 1959 Formula ...
announced a partnership with Xerox commencing in 2025.


Accounting irregularities

On May 31, 2001, Xerox Corporation announced that its auditors, KPMG LLP, had certified Xerox's financial statements for the three years ended December 31, 2000; the financials included some restatements. On March 31, 2002, Xerox restated its financials which reflected the reallocation of equipment sales revenue of more than $2 billion. On April 11, 2002, the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...
filed a complaint against Xerox. The complaint alleged Xerox deceived the public between 1997 and 2000 by employing several "accounting maneuvers", the most significant of which was a change in which Xerox recorded revenue from copy machine leases – recognizing a "sale" when a lease contract was signed, instead of recognizing revenue over the entire length of the contract. At issue was when the revenue was recognized, not the validity of the revenue. Xerox's restatement only changed what year the revenue was recognized. On December 20, 2002, Xerox Corporation reported that it had discovered an error in the calculation of its non-cash interest expense related to a debt instrument and associated interest rate swap agreements, resulted in after-tax understatement of interest expense of approximately $5 million to $6 million or less than 1 cent per share in each of the four quarters of 2001 and for the first three quarters of 2002. In response to the SEC's complaint, Xerox Corporation neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. It agreed to pay a $10 million penalty and to restate its financial results for the years 1997 through 2000. On June 5, 2003, six Xerox senior executives accused of securities fraud settled their issues with the SEC and neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. They agreed to pay $22 million in penalties, disgorgement, and interest. The company received approval to settle the securities lawsuit in 2008. On January 29, 2003, the SEC filed a complaint against Xerox's auditors,
KPMG KPMG is a multinational professional services network, based in London, United Kingdom. As one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte, and PwC. KPMG is a network of firms in 145 countries with 275,288 emplo ...
, alleging four partners in the "Big Five" accounting firm permitted Xerox to "cook the books" to fill a $3 billion "gap" in revenue and $1.4 billion "gap" in pre-tax earnings. In April 2005 KPMG settled with the SEC by paying a US$22.48 million fine. Meanwhile, Xerox paid a civil penalty of $10 million. As part of the settlement KPMG neither admits nor denies wrongdoings. During a settlement with the
Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...
, Xerox began to revamp itself once more. As a symbol of this transformation, the relative size of the word "Xerox" was increased in proportion to "The Document Company" on the corporate signature, and the latter was dropped altogether in September 2004, along with the digital X. However, the digital X and "The Document Company" were still used by Fuji Xerox until April 2008.


Character substitution bug

In 2013, German computer scientist discovered an
error An error (from the Latin , meaning 'to wander'Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “error (n.), Etymology,” September 2023, .) is an inaccurate or incorrect action, thought, or judgement. In statistics, "error" refers to the difference between t ...
in a Xerox WorkCentre 7535 copier. The device would substitute number digits in scanned documents, even when OCR was turned off. For instance, a cost table in a scanned document had an entry of 85.40, instead of the original sum of 65.40. After unsuccessfully trying to resolve this issue with Xerox's customer support, he publicised his findings on his blog. Providing example pages that would lead to the bug occurring, it was confirmed that this bug was reproducible on a wide variety of Xerox WorkCentre and other high-end Xerox copiers. The source of the error was a bug in the JBIG2 implementation, which is an image compression standard that makes use of pattern matching to encode identical characters only once. While this provides a high level of compression, it is susceptible to errors in identifying similar characters. A possible workaround was published by Kriesel, which involved setting the image quality from "normal" to "higher" or "high". Shortly afterwards, it was found that the same fix had been suggested in the printer manual, which mentioned the occurrence of character substitutions in "normal mode", indicating that Xerox was aware of the software error. In Xerox's initial response to a growing interest by the media, the error was described as occurring rarely and only when factory settings had been changed. After Kriesel provided evidence that the error was also occurring in all three image quality modes (normal, higher and high) including the factory defaults, Xerox corrected their statement and released a software patch to eliminate the problem. Despite the problem being present in some instances also in higher quality mode, Xerox advises users that they can use this mode as an alternative to applying the patch.


Trademark

The word ''xerox'' is used as a synonym for ''photocopy'' (both as a noun and a
verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...
) in many areas: for example, "I xeroxed the document and placed it on your desk" or "Please make a xeroxed copy of the articles and hand them out a week before the exam". Though both are common, the company does not condone such uses of its trademark, and is particularly concerned about the ongoing use of Xerox as a verb as this places the trademark in danger of being declared a generic word by the courts. The company is engaged in an ongoing advertising and media campaign to convince the public that Xerox should not be used as a verb. To this end, the company has written to publications that have used Xerox as a verb. It has also purchased print advertisements using "xerox" as a verb, claiming that "you cannot 'xerox' a document, but you can copy it on a Xerox Brand copying machine". Xerox Corporation continues to protect its trademark in most if not all trademark categories. Despite their efforts, many dictionaries continue to include the use of "xerox" as a verb, including the ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
''. In 2012, the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) of India declared "xerox" a non-generic term after "almost 50 years (1963–2009) of continued existence on the register without challenge, and with proof of almost 44 years of use evident (1965–2009)", but as of 2015, most Indians still use it as a synonym for photocopying. The company has also advertised its trademark concerns, in an attempt to persuade journalists and others not to use "Xerox" as a verb.


See also

* Faxlore, often called 'Xeroxlore' *
List of Indian IT companies A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...


Citations


General references

* Ellis, Charles D.,
Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox
', Wiley, 2006, . * Owen, David
''Copies in Seconds: How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg—Chester Carlson and the Birth of the Xerox Machine''
Simon & Schuster, 2004, .


External links

* {{Authority control 1906 establishments in New York (state) American companies established in 1906 Brands that became generic British royal warrant holders Companies based in Norwalk, Connecticut Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Companies listed on the Nasdaq Computer companies of the United States Computer hardware companies Computer printer companies Defunct computer systems companies Electronics companies established in 1906 Electronics companies of the United States History of Rochester, New York Manufacturing companies based in Connecticut Multinational companies headquartered in the United States National Medal of Technology recipients Peabody Award winners Photocopiers Printing companies of the United States Printing press manufacturers Purveyors to the Court of Denmark