Xerox 914

The copier was introduced to the public on September 16, 1959, in a demonstration at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York, shown on live television.

[1] Xerography, a process of producing images using electricity, was invented in 1938 by physicist-lawyer Chester Floyd "Chet" Carlson[2] (1906–1968),[3] and an engineering partner, Otto Kornei.

[4] Carlson entered into a research agreement with the Battelle Memorial Institute in 1945,[5] when he and Kornei produced the first operable copy machine.

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.

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.

One writer has assessed that the popularity of the machine has had a number of lasting impacts, such as prompting the introduction of highlighter pens, 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.

[14] The arrival of a Xerox 914 is a cultural signifier in the second season of Mad Men, set in a 1961 Manhattan advertising agency.

In the 2017 film The Post, Daniel Ellsberg, portrayed by Matthew Rhys, is seen using a Xerox 914 to copy the Pentagon Papers.