IBM copier family explained

Introduced:1970
Discontinued:1988

IBM Office Products Division (OPD) manufactured and sold copier equipment and supplies from 1970 till IBM withdrew from the copier market in 1988. IBM's decision to compete in this market resulted in the first commercial use of an organic photoconductor now widely used in most photocopiers. It is often held up as an example of a corporate u-turn, where a company rejects a technology and then adopts it.[1] It showed that despite the size of IBM's sales and engineering organisations, this did not guarantee success in every market it chose to compete in.[2] The development effort that resulted in the IBM Copier helped in the development of IBMs first laser printer, the IBM 3800.`

IBM, Xerox and Xerography

In the 1930s, Chester Carlson, the inventor of the photocopier, began his research into what came to be called Xerography. Having made good progress by the early 1940s, he began looking for investors, approaching many office supplies companies including IBM. IBM reportedly rejected his proposal because they felt that carbon paper was a cheaper alternative.[3] He eventually found an investor in the Haloid Corporation, however they struggled to finish the product and approached IBM to offer them what became the Xerox 914.[4] IBM hired consulting firm Arthur D. Little to assess the technology, but that assessment was negative, so IBM did not invest in the product.[5] [6] Haloid invested heavily and launched the Xerox 914 in 1959. By 1961 Haloid (now renamed to Xerox) was making $66m USD in revenue and in 1965 their revenues were over $500m USD. In 1970 Xerox held 70% of what was then a one billion dollar (USD) Global copier market. At that time there were more than 40 companies competing with Xerox, but they all had to use coated paper (rather than plain paper), due to Xerox refusing to license their patent on the selenium drum technology, which was key to using plain paper.

In 1966 two IBM Scientists working at the IBM Research Lab in San Jose, Meredith David Shattuck and Ulo Vahtra, developed and patented an organic photoconductor with sufficient light sensitivity to be used in a copier, earning them $110,000 in IBM Inventors Awards.[7] [8] Meanwhile, in 1965 George Castro (PhD), authored a doctrinal thesis at Dartmouth College that demonstrated that organic materials could conduct electricity when exposed to light.[9] At that time this was a significant scientific achievement and led to an opportunity to conduct more research in this area at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in 1967.[10] IBM hired him as a Research Staff Member in 1968 to help in the development of Organic PhotoConductors, a project he came to manage and which was key to IBM's development of both the Copier I and the IBM 3800. IBM needed this both to avoid patent infringement with Xerox (who used a photoconductor based on selenium) and to let them use plain paper in their Copiers. George Castro has been referred to as the inventor of the IBM Copier,[11] although it was Shattuck and Vahtra who were specifically mentioned in IBMs legal battles with Xerox around patents.[12]

Another difference that IBM achieved was developing a dry hot roll that did not require silicone oil to fuse the toner onto paper without the toner sticking to the roll.

When IBM announced its first Copier product in April 1970, Xerox immediately sued IBM for breaching 22 patents despite IBM having licensed many of these patents for use in computer printers. In August 1973 Xerox filed a supplemental lawsuit after the launch of the Copier II.[13] The two lawsuits were consolidated, but remained in pre-trial stage. In November 1975 IBM counter-sued Xerox for infringing an IBM Patent. Their various lawsuits were finally settled in 1978 by an exchange of patents and a payment by IBM to Xerox of US$25 million.[14]

IBMs market share of the worldwide copier market in 1975 was 5%. By 1977 it was reportedly as high as 10%. By 1980 it was 4% and by 1985 it was only 3%.

There were three significant product releases in the IBM Copier family: The IBM Copier, the IBM Copier II and the IBM Series III Copier.

IBM Copier

On April 21, 1970, IBM announced their first copier simply called the IBM Copier.

When the IBM Copier II was released, IBM renamed the IBM Copier to the IBM Copier I.[15] In terms of competition, while the Copier I was faster than the Xerox 914 (which ran at 7 copies per minute)[16] it was reported as competing with the desktop Xerox 660 that could make 11 copies per minute.[17]

Xerox reportedly purchased a Copier I shortly after it was released and ran it for two shifts per day for three months. It performed so well that they concluded it was a very reliable machine, reliable enough to make 50,000 copies per month.

The Copier I is significant in Electrophotography as it is the first commercial product to use an organic photoconductor.[18]

The Copier I has the following features:

The Copier I also played a role in the development of the IBM 3800, which was IBMs first Laser Printer.[22]

IBM withdrew the Copier I from marketing on June 30, 1981[23]

IBM Copier II

The IBM Copier II was introduced in 1972.

By 1977 IBM had sold 70,000 to 80,000 units, claiming 10% of the worldwide market.[24]

The IBM Copier II has the following features:

IBM withdrew the Copier II from marketing on May 6, 1985.[30]

Copier Art

The American artist and writer named Pati Hill used the IBM Copier II to create artwork sometimes referred to as Xerox Art. In 1977 IBM loaned her a Copier II free of charge for two and a half years which she used to generate artwork for her books and exhibitions.[31]

IBM 3896

The Copier II was also sold as the IBM 3896, tape/document converter.[32] The IBM 3896 is used to copy adding machine tapes that were used for bank deposits. The top of the Copier was redesigned to handle these tapes and stack them in the correct order. Note the use of the term tape in the product name has nothing to do with magnetic tape, it refers to paper tapes. The 3896 was announced on April 5, 1977, and was withdrawn on July 25, 1980.[33]

IBM Series III Copier/Duplicator

The IBM Series III was announced in March 1976. Unlike the Copier I and Copier II where a whole new design was released within 2–4 years, the Series III was not replaced with a new product, although it did have four major model releases.

This was the first IBM copier to use the following:

Eight models were offered over the life of the product across four major releases.

Models 10 and 20

The first two models, Models 10 and 20, were announced in 1976 and withdrawn from Marketing on March 11, 1986[36]

Features include:

Due to extensive reliability problems with paper jams (due to the long and complicated paper path), it was withdrawn in January 1978 and re-released in November 1978 with a considerable number of modifications (which IBM called Engineering Changes or ECs), which meant the momentum gained by the success of the Copier II was lost.[38]

Models 30 and 40

The next two models were Models 30 and 40, were announced in 1980 and withdrawn from Marketing on June 16, 1986[39]

Features included:

While the Models 30/40 did not suffer from the reliability issues seen with the Models 10/20, IBM admitted they were not commercially successful due to poor price performance caused by high manufacturing costs.

Model 60

The next model was the Model 60, announced May 13, 1982 and withdrawn from Marketing on February 3, 1988 [40] The Model 60 was effectively a follow-on product to the Model 40 (in that it offered copy reduction as a standard feature). It uses the same chassis as the model 40 and in fact ex-lease Model 40s were factory rebuilt into Model 60s. The Model 60 offers a more modular way to add or remove features and has a newly designed Semi-Automatic Document Feed (SADF).[41]

Features include:

IBM ran extensive pre-launch testing on the Model 60, testing at 19 customer sites in New York and Houston for 45 days prior to launch. This resulted in 17 of those clients ordering a total of 105 Model 60s. IBM then launched a major marketing campaign to promote the Model 60 throughout 1983 and 1984.[42]

Think Magazine: Comeback

Source:

IBM dedicated a large section of the March/April 1983 issue of their staff magazine Think, to the Model 60. They titled the edition and the article: 'Comeback: How Boulder brought new life to the copier business'. They dedicated 12 of the 48 pages to the article, 11 of those being completely filled with text; there were no photographs.

The article had three major themes:

1). A frank acknowledgment of the problems with the models 10/20 and the pricing issues with the models 30/40.  They effectively blamed the quality issues on:

2). An assurance that IBM was still committed to producing Copiers and that the quality of the Model 60 was of an exceptional standard.

3). An attempt to frame IBM as an innovator in Copier development with two pages focusing on 'firsts in Copiers'

Models 50, 70 and 85

The final release were the Models 50, 70 and 85 announced in 1986. This was a major refresh of the Series III. Models 70 and 85 include a redesigned developer unit with two magnetic brush rolls instead of one, which IBM claimed provided enhanced character fill, increased optical density and excellent copy quality in comparison to previous models. You will note the model 50 was announced four years after the model 60, this is not a mistake.

All three copiers have a primary drawer that holds 2100 sheets of paper and a secondary drawer that holds 600 sheets of paper. All three use the same toner: IBM part number 1669070.

The models 70 and 85 also offer higher-rated copies per month as per the table below:

!!Copies per minute!Copies per hour!Copies per month!Copier Weight!Copier Dimensions
Series III Model 50[44] 55330030,000
Series III Model 70[45] 704200175,000
Series III Model 85[46] 704200175,000
The model 85 also introduces three new features not seen before on an IBM Copier:

IBM withdrew the Series III models 50, 70 and 85 from IBM Marketing on June 28, 1988, when they transferred the product line to Kodak.[47]

IBM 6670

The Series III was used as part of the IBM 6670. The IBM 6670 and its Collator unit (the IBM 6671) were introduced in 1979 and withdrawn from marketing on November 19, 1986.[48]

IBM Executive Copier 102

In February 1981, IBM announced it would resell the Minolta compact desktop EP-310 as the IBM Executive Copier 102, machine type model 6820–001. It is capable of making 12 copies a minute, and sold for $2,990 to $3,450 depending on the quantity purchased. IBM had never offered a desktop Copier before, but found they could not compete with Minolta's own dealers and sales people who were able to undercut IBMs pricing with the Minolta branded version of the same copier.[38] This was because IBMs agreement with Minolta was not exclusive.

The IBM Executive Copier 102 was withdrawn from marketing on December 30, 1982, after less than two years in the market.[49]

IBM 6821 Copier Management Information System (CMIS)

On July 17, 1984, IBM announced the 6821 Copier Management Information System (CMIS). The solution consists of software that ran on an IBM 5150 Personal Computer with 128MB of RAM and two double sided floppy disk drives, running DOS 1.1. It uses special cable adapters to connect to up to 20 IBM Copiers and later, selected Kodak and Xerox copiers.[50] [51] The system is used to centrally collect usage statistics, since copier billing (for rental or maintenance charges) was usually on a per-copy usage basis. It was withdrawn on April 20, 1987.[52]

Manufacturing plants

IBM initially developed and manufactured their copier products in Lexington, Kentucky. This changed in April 1973 when IBM Office Product Division assumed responsibility for the IBM Boulder site. Given the space required in Lexington to handle the demand for the Lexington manufactured self-correcting Selectric II typewriter, OPD announced that copier development and manufacturing would move to the IBM Boulder plant.[53] This only changed when in April 1986, IBM announced they were launching a US$120 million remissioning project that would result in the end of manufacturing at the Boulder site, focusing it instead on software and services.[54] Thus in 1987 copier manufacturing (which by then only consisted of the Series III) was moved from Boulder, Colorado to Charlotte, North Carolina, although development remained in Boulder.

IBM Germany also manufactured copiers in Berlin starting in 1970. In 1974 production moved to a new 50 acre site at Marienfelde in Berlin, that built copiers, dictation machines and typewriters.[55] [56] [57]

Organic photoconductor and TNF

The original photoconductor used by the IBM Copier I and Copier II (and later by the IBM 3800) used a chemical known as 2, 4, 7-trinitro-9-fluorenone, commonly referred to as TNF. The photoconductor was mainly composed of a TNF and polyvinyl carbazole resin coating on an aluminized mylar sheet and was manufactured by IBM in Lexington Kentucky.[58] Over the course of the 1970s, health and safety concerns were raised about TNF being a cancer-causing chemical. The US Federal Department of Health and Human Services contracted the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to investigate these concerns but their report did not identify any issues. Despite this, in 1980 IBM changed its advice and required its employees to always handle the photoconductor with gloves.[59] IBM then withdrew TNF based photoconductors in late 1981 for the Copier II and IBM 3800, replacing it with a photoconductor based on chlorotiane blue and diethylaminobenzal- denyde-dithenylhydrazone (sometimes called blue coral). This material was already being used in the IBM Series III and IBM 6670 and was manufactured by IBM in Boulder Colorado.[60]

The end of OPD and withdrawal from the copier market

The IBM Office Products Division was formed from the IBM Electric Typewriter Division in August 1964.[61] It marketed products such as the Selectric Typewriter, the MagCard Selectric Typewriter, the Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer, Dictation Equipment and the IBM Copier Family until 1981,[62] when it was merged with the data processing and general systems divisions into two new divisions:  National Accounts and National Marketing. This was reportedly done to prevent the client from needing to deal with multiple sales representatives.[63] The Boulder and Lexington plant/lab sites became part of the new Information Products Division.

The IBM line of Copier/Duplicators, and their associated service contracts, were sold to Eastman Kodak in 1988. At the time of sale it was reported there were approximately 61,500 IBM copiers still in service. IBM indicated that the models 50, 70 and 85 of the Series III would be manufactured by IBM in Charlotte and sold by Kodak with the Kodak logo.[64] It is unclear how many IBM manufactured copiers Kodak sold, however by 1996 Kodak also announced they were also withdrawing from the copier market, selling their copier division to Danka for $684m USD.[65] Danka was then eventually bought by Konica Minolta in 2008.[66]

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