Xerox

Xerox began in 1906 in Rochester, New York, as the Haloid Company, a maker of photographic paper. On 22 October 1938, in a borrowed laboratory in Astoria, Queens, Chester Carlson produced the first xerographic image; Haloid acquired the right to develop the process in 1947. The 914 plain-paper copier of 1959 transformed the company, which renamed itself Haloid Xerox and then, in 1961, Xerox. The Palo Alto Research Center it opened in 1970 produced the Alto, Ethernet, the laser printer, Smalltalk and the graphical user interface. The holding company today is Xerox Holdings Corporation, headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut.

History

By Xerox's own account in The Story of Xerography, Carlson spent a decade being turned down by more than twenty companies. In 1944 the non-profit Battelle Memorial Institute signed a royalty-sharing contract with him and took up development; a contract effective 1 January 1947 gave Haloid the licence to build a xerographic machine. Haloid was small — 1946 earnings of $101,000 on sales of $6.75 million. Its president, Joseph C. Wilson, later reflected that Battelle probably chose Haloid because Haloid was going to live or die on the technology.

The first 914 shipped to a customer in March 1960. Against a forecast of perhaps 5,000 units in three years, 10,000 had shipped by the end of 1962. Net income went from $2 million in 1959 to $22.6 million in 1963.

In 1970 Xerox opened PARC in Palo Alto, California. What happened there over the next decade is among the densest stretches in the history of computing.

On the Story That Xerox Invented Everything and Sold Nothing

Xerox is the standard illustration of a company that let its own research escape. The account is half right.

Right: the Alto never became a product. The Star was priced out of the market that the Macintosh later took at $2,495. Ethernet was commercialised not by Xerox but by 3Com, founded by Metcalfe after he left in 1979. And what Apple took away from PARC in December 1979 went into the Lisa and the Macintosh.

Wrong: Xerox did productise the laser printer, and the 9700 line became a business alongside copiers. The Star did ship — it simply did not sell. And PARC was not a squandered laboratory. Measured by what it put into general circulation rather than by what its owner recouped, it was one of the highest-return research investments of the late twentieth century. Like Bell Labs, it generated enormous external value that the company funding it could not capture.

Key Events

• 1906 — founded as the Haloid Company
• 22 October 1938 — Carlson makes the first xerographic image, in Astoria
• 1 January 1947 — the Battelle–Haloid licence takes effect
• 1959 — the 914 is announced; first customer shipment March 1960
• 1961 — the company takes the name Xerox and lists on the New York Stock Exchange
• 1970 — the Palo Alto Research Center opens
• April 1981 — Xerox 8010 Star Information System
• 2002 — PARC is established as a separate subsidiary
• 24 April 2023 — Xerox announces the donation of PARC to SRI International, retaining a contracted research programme and a branded innovation hub on site
• 1 July 2025 — the Lexmark acquisition closes, at $1.5 billion inclusive of net debt and assumed liabilities

Key Metrics

• FY2025 revenue: US$7.02 billion, up 12.9% year on year; GAAP net loss of US$1.03 billion
• Q4 2025 revenue: US$2.03 billion, up 25.7%, driven by the consolidation of Lexmark
• Stated Lexmark integration synergy target: at least US$300 million
• Post-acquisition scale, per Xerox: more than 200,000 clients across over 170 countries, and 125 manufacturing and distribution facilities in 16 countries

Influence and Criticism

"Xerox" became an English verb meaning to photocopy — a dangerous kind of trademark success, and one the company has spent decades resisting.

Criticism has always centred on PARC, but the interesting version of the argument is not that brilliant researchers were failed by foolish executives. For Xerox in the 1970s, copiers were overwhelmingly profitable, and selling a few thousand $10,000 computers a year was close to invisible in the company's numbers. It is the earliest large-scale instance of a pattern later given a name: a disruptive technology hidden behind the revenue of the existing business.

Today's Xerox is a print-equipment and IT-services company in the middle of a restructuring. Donating PARC in 2023 marked the end of holding basic research in house; absorbing Lexmark in 2025 marks a decision to pursue scale in a shrinking print market instead. The company that invented the office of the future is now managing the contraction of the office itself.