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40 At 40: A Look At Pioneering IT Companies Founded In 1982 And Before
Rick Whiting
As part of CRN’s 40th anniversary this year, here’s a look at 40 companies across the IT industry that have been around as long as CRN – and in many cases much longer.
Xerox
Xerox puts the company’s start in 1906 when the M.H. Kuhn Company (founded in 1903) became the Haloid Company in Rochester, N.Y. to manufacture and sell photographic paper, according to a company history. In 1935 Haloid bought Rectigraph Co., a photocopying machine manufacturer that used Haloid paper. And in 1947 the company obtained the commercial rights to xerography, an imaging process (originally called electrophotography) invented by Chester Carlson, according to Britannica.
The company was renamed the Xerox Haloid Company in 1958 and one year later introduced the 914 xerographic copier, which made photographic copies on plain, uncoated paper. The company’s named was changed to Xerox in 1961.
Over the last 50 years Xerox, with its Xerox PARC research lab, has developed word processing machines, laser printers, and even created Ethernet, the office communications network. But the company’s focus has remained on developing and selling print and digital document products and services, including print management software and the DocuShare content management platform.
