The History of Office Technology
While signing into our AOL accounts is now a thing of the past, “information technology” started developing long before those squeaky, ear-cringing sounds.
In the late 1800’s, Arthur Irving was instrumental in developing the groundwork for modern day office technology. He patented a daisy wheel design that was used on the Victor Index Typewriter.
Post WWII, by the 1960’s, office technologies began to develop quickly. IBM introduced their Selectric Typewriters – a highly successful line of electric typewriters with a golf-ball shaped, interchangeable head that replaced the conventional typewriter’s basket of type bars. The user had access to different fonts, scientific notations and other languages, and typists’ speed and productivity soared.
The Olivetti Pragramma 101, introduced in 1965, could read and write to magnetic cards and display results on a built-in printer. It could be claimed that this was the first personal computer.
In 1970, Dr. Andrew Gabor at Diablo Data Systems invented new impact printing technology, also called the “Daisy Wheel”. It used interchangeable preformed type elements to generate high quality results like the IBM Selectric, but these machines were much faster.
Starting around 1972, Daisy Wheel printing was used in electronic typewriters, word processors and computers.
While typewriters remained a staple in businesses for many years, and the Selectric typewriter eventually captured 75% of the United States business market, the world of office technology and IT services was quickly changing. The 1970’s gave rise to the empires of IBM, Microsoft and Apple as they began to release technology that would evolve into the personal computer. “Floppy disks” developed in the late 1960’s were the primary external writable storage device for more than 2 decades. They were so well known that the “save” icon still resembles a floppy disk. Today floppy drives have some limited uses, but have been augmented by USB flash drives, memory cards, and now, cloud storage.
On the imaging side of the office technology world, in 1938 Chester Carlson first created a copy by using light dry powder and static electricity from his handkerchief. Because he almost burned down his apartment during this process, it was 1946 before Chester signed the first agreement to license his electrophotography technology for commercial use. The next few years saw many copy machine fires, with some manufacturers even providing wooden tongs to remove flaming pieces of paper.
In 1959, Xerox released the first “modern” version of the copier called the 914. It was bulky, heavy and downright complicated. There was a high probability that it could catch fire at any time, but that threat didn’t stop this copier from rapidly hitting offices across the country. To make copies, the machine used a rotating drum to create an electrostatic image. The image was transferred to paper using toner, and everything was then sealed using heat. Incredibly, it could create copies in just seven seconds. While today’s speeds are much faster, this was breakthrough technology!
As the years went by, this new incredible office technology completely took flight, redefining how offices and people worked together and creating greater demand for support services and businesses like Lockwood Moore. While other companies released major versions of copiers not too long after, Xerox dominated the market for many years. Now brands like Kyocera, Ricoh, Sharp and Canon are major forces in the industry.
At Lockwood Moore, we are thankful for the incredible innovators in the office technology and IT fields who have opened the way for us to be the top ranked office technology and IT Support company in the Reno and Sacramento areas. We are committed to finding IT solutions for every one of our clients and strive to be the most reliable and responsive IT Support company.
