Xerox 914
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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 Chester Floyd Carlson (February 8, 1906 – September 19, 1968) was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle, Washington. Carlson invented electrophotography, the process used by millions of photocopiers worldwide. Ca ...
's work on the
xerographic Xerography is a dry photocopying technique. Originally called electrophotography, it was renamed xerography—from the roots el, ξηρός, label=none ''xeros'', meaning "dry" and -γραφία ''-graphia'', meaning "writing"—to emphasize ...
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 The Sherry-Netherland is a 38-story apartment hotel located at 781 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 59th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was designed and built by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & K ...
in New York, shown on
live television Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television over the Internet when content or programming is played continuously (not on demand) ...
.


Background

Xerography, a process of producing images using electricity, was invented in 1938 by physicist-lawyer Chester Floyd "Chet" Carlson (1906–1968), and an engineering friend, Otto Kornei. Carlson entered into a research agreement with the
Battelle Memorial Institute Battelle Memorial Institute (more widely known as simply Battelle) is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle is a charitable trust organized as a nonprofit corporation u ...
in 1944, 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. Haloid introduced the first commercial xerographic copier, the Xerox Model A, 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. 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. 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.


Specifications and features

The 914 model (so-called because it could copy originals up to 9 inches by 14
inch Measuring tape with inches The inch (symbol: in or ″) is a unit of length in the British imperial and the United States customary systems of measurement. It is equal to yard or of a foot. Derived from the Roman uncia ("twelfth") ...
es (229 mm × 356 mm) 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 poundsBrooks, p. 17 (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, 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 A fire extinguisher is a handheld active fire protection device usually filled with a dry or wet chemical used to extinguish or control small fires, often in emergencies. It is not intended for use on an out-of-control fire, such as one which ha ...
, along with the copier.
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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. A 1967 article in ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' 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." 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.Brooks, p. 18 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, 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.


Sales

The Xerox 914 was produced between 1960 and 1977. It was introduced to the public on September 16, 1959, in a demonstration at the
Sherry-Netherland Hotel The Sherry-Netherland is a 38-story apartment hotel located at 781 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 59th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was designed and built by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & K ...
in New York, shown on
live television Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television over the Internet when content or programming is played continuously (not on demand) ...
. One of the two copiers that were present that day caught fire. The 914 was one of the most successful
Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...
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. 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.


Legacy

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 pen A highlighter is a type of writing device used to mark attention to sections of text by marking them with a vivid, translucent colour. A typical highlighter is fluorescent yellow, colored with pyranine. Different compounds, such as rhodamines ( R ...
s, 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.


In popular culture

The arrival of a Xerox 914 is a cultural signifier in the second season of ''
Mad Men ''Mad Men'' is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Its fict ...
'', set in a 1961 Manhattan advertising agency. It is acquired specifically to impress a potential client with how modern the agency is. In the 2017 film ''The Post'',
Daniel Ellsberg Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American political activist, and former United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the ''Pent ...
, portrayed by
Matthew Rhys Matthew Rhys Evans ( ; born 8 November 1974) is a Welsh actor. He is known for playing Kevin Walker in '' Brothers & Sisters'' (2006–2011) and Philip Jennings in ''The Americans'' (2013–2018), for which he received two Golden Globe Awar ...
, is seen using a Xerox 914 to copy the ''
Pentagon Papers The ''Pentagon Papers'', officially titled ''Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force'', is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States in the Vietnam War, United States' political and military ...
''.


References


Further reading

* Brooks, John, (1967) 'Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox' The New Yorker Magazine, Apr 1 and available at Gatesnotes.com * * {{Xerox Xerox Photocopiers Products introduced in 1959 American inventions