Xerox physicist Gary Starkweather realized in 1967 that exposing a copy machine’s light-sensitive drum to a paper original wasn’t the only way to create an image. A computer could “write” it with a laser instead.
Xerox wasn’t interested. So in 1971, Starkweather transferred to Xerox PARC, away from corporate oversight. Within a year, he had built the world’s first laser printer, launched a new era in computer printing…and earning billions for Xerox.
Unlike the company’s Xerography process, however, Xerox had to share the laser printer market. IBM and Canon soon developed competing products.
Gary Starkweather prototyped the first laser printer by modifying a standard Xerox office copier. It printed 60 pages a minute at 500 dots per inch. It took almost five years to produce a commercial version: the huge, expensive 9700.View Artifact Detail
IBM beat Xerox to market with its 3800 laser printer, which could print more than 350 pages a minute on continuous, fan-folded paper.View Artifact Detail
HP’s fourth laser printer cost much less than other laser printers, yet still offered excellent print quality. First-year sales exceeded 250,000.View Artifact Detail
The LaserWriter was expensive compared to the cost of a small computer. But the PostScript printing software made it easy to combine text and graphics into attractive output, similar to that of much more expensive specialized systems.View Artifact Detail