The Xerox company has been around for so long that its name has become synonymous with the act of photocopying. They were the first company to introduce a photocopier to the world.
On September 16th 1959, a live television demonstration made the Xerox 914 the first successful photocopier. It took the Xerox machine around 25 seconds to make one copy – not too bad considering it was the first machine of it’s kind. One little side note about the machine is that if too many copies were made during one period of time, it would overheat. As a result this overheating would lead to the machine catching fire.
The Xerox machine – regardless of that one little fact – was a success. To fix that overheating potential fire hazard the company attached a small fire extinguisher with every photocopier sold. Ever since that one day at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel when the Xerox company had their live demonstration they marked their spot in photocopying history.