It was 50 years ago that Xerox introduced the first office photocopier. The Xerox 914 burst on the scene in 1960 and revolutionized the office.

The machine, which could handle paper up to 9″ x 14″ worked at blazing speed of 7 pages per minute.

Copiers have gotten so common that it is hard to remember a time when typists stuck together a half-dozen pages divided by carbon paper in order to have backup copies of a report. It was a messy business, and the copies would look progressively worse than the original. The alternative was using primitive copiers with slick thermal paper, sort of like that used by fax machines up to a decade ago. What a change it was to have any number of copies of any document. Copies whose quality was almost as good as the original.

Fortune magazine reports an amusing story that shows that little has changed in the world of business prognostication:

“In 1958 IBM, which was considering partnering on the copier with Haloid Xerox, hired consulting firm Arthur D. Little. The A.D. Little report done for IBM concluded that the 914 had ‘no future in the office copying market.’”

One other thing: The 914 was a great hit but it had one annoying drawback — a tendency to catch on fire. Xerox later equipped the model with its own fire extinguisher.

Tags: 914, office copier, Xerox