The history of Océ as a company can be traced back to 1877, although its printing-related activities did not begun until 1919.

[1] The company has research, development, and production facilities in the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Czechia, Romania and the United States.

Océ began in 1877 as a family business manufacturing machines for coloring butter and margarine.

In 1930, the margarine factories of Jurgens and Van den Bergh and the English Lever Brothers merged to become Unilever.

[4] In 1919 the grandson of Lodewijk, Louis van der Grinten, became interested in the blueprint process used for producing wide-format technical drawings.