A Brief History Of The Xerox Corporation - Part 1

By Author: Mingki Tsui
Total Articles: 2
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The Xerox Corporation, headquartered in Norwalk, CT, has over 57,000 employees worldwide. The company has consistently ranked among the top firms in the computer category of FORTUNE magazine's "World's Most Admired Companies" list, and is in the top one-third of the annual FORTUNE 500.

Xerox has a strategic focus on three primary corporate and consumer markets. First is the high-end production environment, including commercial printing. Next is networking solutions, in offices small and large. Finally, there is the large, growing category of its "value-added" services. There are two overarching, unifying themes that cross all Xerox product and service categories, relying on the company's demonstrated, core strengths and its position as "the document company." These themes are (1) color and (2) practical solutions that customize the various Xerox devices and methodologies to solve their customers' problems.

Of the firm's $17.6 billion in revenue for 2008, the U.S. market accounted for over half, or $9.1billion, while Europe totaled $6 billion. Together, Latin America, Canada and other nations around the world brought ...
... in the remainder, $2.5 billion. Not only does the company do business internationally, it wins awards around the world, as well. In fact, in 2008 alone Xerox earned more than 230 different awards for quality, innovation and service. Continuing its history of innovation, the company also introduced 29 new products in 2008, delivered to companies and individuals across a broad array of different sales channels.

Building on a strong foundation

Chester Carlson was a patent attorney and a dedicated, though part-time, inventor. He created the first "xerographic" image in his Queens, NY, workshop on October 22nd of 1938. Amazingly, for years he was unable to interest many people, and no manufacturers or buyers, in his invention. Business owners, product developers and entrepreneurs were convinced there was no market for "copiers" because carbon paper still worked just fine. An additional problem was that Carlson's prototype was bulky, awkward to use and downright messy. Some two dozen companies, IBM and General Electric included, reacted to Carlson's invention with what the inventor later called "an enthusiastic lack of interest."

The Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, OH, made a deal to refine Carlson's process, which he called "electrophotography," in 1944. Some three years later, the Haloid Company, a photographic paper manufacturer in Rochester, N.Y., secured a license from Battelle to build and market a "copying machine" using Carlson's technology. Carlson agreed with the executives of Haloid that "electrophotography" was too unwieldy a term, so the story goes that a professor of classical languages from The Ohio State University came up with "xerography" using the Greek for "dry" and "writing."

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