So here you are, standing in the s-l-o-w-e-s-t line at the checkout counter of your favorite office supply store, shopping cart full, arms loaded. Everything on your list is checked off, mission accomplished. What are you gonna do for the next ten minutes while you patiently but boredly wait your turn to pay?
A quick glance into your shopping cart inspires you to think about all the Xerox products you're stocking up on – Xerox ink cartridges, transparencies, paper, labels. Just knowing all these products will be compatible and won't jam, crash, or tear at a critical moment and leave you with a headache and in a cranky mood is enough to make the wait to check out more pleasant already. Trying to cut corners on the cost of supplies seems to buy only headaches, frustrations, and missed deadlines further down the production line.
Those Xerox ink cartridges in your hand seem rather insignificant but when you ponder its history, the history of the Xerox company, you find an amazing story. Xerox Corporation got its start as the Haloid Company in Rochester, New York, in 1906, manufacturing photographic equipment and supplies. Xerox's first major breakthrough appeared in 1959 when Chester Carlson, a physicist / inventor / patent attorney developed a process he called xerography (electronic photography) which led to the first plain paper copier, which quickly became a phenomenal success. The Haloid Company became Haloid Xerox at this time.
Since then, Xerox ink cartridges are just one product in a long line of successful products and processes developed by Xerox. The current name, Xerox Corporation, was adopted in 1961 when the company became listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Xerox is one of a very, very short list of corporations who have names that have become commonly used, readily accepted verbs in several languages.
So in addition those Xerox ink cartridges, what else has Xerox come up with? There's the desktop printer; the minicomputer, and later workstations, complete with windows, menus, and icons; the mouse; the laser printer; the ...
Huh? My turn already??
