On this day: the Xerox 914 and the start of the era of ordinary copying

On September 16, 1959, the first commercial photocopier, the Xerox 914, was presented to the public in the United States. For the history of office equipment this is a landmark event: it was from that moment that document copying stopped being a task for special services and turned into an ordinary office procedure. The point is not another device in a catalog — it is the boundary between two eras of working with paper.

The meaning of the change is simple: the duplication of documents was losing its status as a separate operation. If previously copying had remained the business of special services, now it was becoming an everyday action inside the office itself, right where the document is needed.

The date is fixed by the calendar: September 16 is the 259th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar, the 260th in leap years, with 106 days remaining until the end of the year. In the 20th and 21st centuries this date corresponds to September 3 in the Julian calendar, and in the modern astronomical epoch the Sun enters the constellation Virgo on this day.

The same date also leaves a scientific trace. On September 16, 1987, the Montreal Protocol on the protection of the Earth's ozone layer was signed, and since 1994, by a UN decision, this day has been observed as the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer.

Another episode of the day comes from the history of science and geography: in 1915, Boris Vilkitsky's Russian polar expedition came to an end, having discovered the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago.

So a single calendar date brings together office equipment that changed everyday work with documents and large scientific stories — from polar expeditions to the protection of the atmosphere. The Xerox 914 is no chance guest in this company: it was its demonstration that started the habit of duplicating documents, without which a modern office is hard to imagine.

Image: Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, U.S.A. CC BY 2.0 · License

Translation editors: Соловьев В., Пеков А.