Xerox Scandal

Xerox Corporation

Xerox Corporation is a $16 billion technology and services enterprise that helps businesses deploy smart document management strategies and find better ways to work. It’s intent is to constantly lead with innovative technologies, products and solutions that customers can depend upon to improve business results.

Xerox provides the document industry’s broadest portfolio of offerings. Digital systems include color and black-and-white printing and publishing systems, digital presses and “book factories”, advanced and multifunction systems, laser and solid ink network printers, copiers, and fax machines. Xerox services are unmatched and includes helping businesses develop online document archives, analyzing how employees can most efficiently share documents and knowledge in the office, operating in-house printing shops or mailrooms, and building Web-based processes for personalizing direct mail, invoices, brochures and more. Xerox also offers associated software, support and supplies such as toner, paper and ink.

Xerox Corporation

Headquartered in Stamford, Conn., Xerox is No.142 among the Fortune 500 and has 53,700 employees worldwide. The company’s operations are guided by customer-focused and employee-centered core values – such as social responsibility, diversity and quality –augmented by a passion for innovation, speed and adaptability.

History of Xerox

Chester Carlson, a patent attorney and part-time inventor, made the first xerographic image in his makeshift laboratory in Astoria, Queens, NY on October 22, 1938. He spent years trying to sell his invention without success. Business executives and entrepreneurs didn’t believe there was a market for a copier when carbon paper worked just fine. And the prototype for the copier was unwieldy and messy. Some 20 companies, IBM and General Electric among them, met his invention with what Carlson called “an enthusiastic lack of interest”.

Finally in 1944, the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, contracted with Carlson to refine his new process, which Carlson called “electrophotography”. Three years later, The Haliod Company, maker of photographic paper, approached Battelle and obtained a license to develop and market a copying machine based on Carlson’s technology. Haloid later obtained all rights to Carlson’s invention. Carlson & Haloid agreed that the word “electrophotography” was too cumbersome. A professor of classical languages at Ohio State University suggested “xerography”, derived from the Greek words for “dry” and “writing”.

History of Xerox

Haloid coined the word “Xerox” for the new copiers, and in 1948, the word Xerox was trademarked. Inspired by the early, modest success of Xerox copiers, Haloid changed it’s name in 1958 to Haloid Xerox Inc. The company became Xerox Corporation in 1961 after wide acceptance of the Xerox 914, the first automatic office copier to use ordinary paper.

September 2004 marked the 45th anniversary of the Xerox 914. More than 200,000 units were made around the world between 1959 and 1976, the year the company stopped production of the 914. In 1985, 26 years after it’s production Xerox announced that it would no longer renew 914 contracts in the U.S. Instead, a time and materials repair services was offered for the more than 600,000 units still in operation. Today, the Xerox 914 is part of American history as an artifact in the Smithsonian Institute.

Xerox and Quality

Xerox products are consistently rated among the world’s best by independent testing organizations. Since 1980, Xerox and Fuji Xerox have won 25 national quality awards in 20 countries, including the world’s 3 most prestigious. In the U.S., Xerox is a two-time winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: for Xerox Business Services in 1997 and for Xerox Business Products and Systems in 1989. Xerox Europe, formerly Rank Xerox, won the first European Quality Award in 1993. Fuji Xerox won the Deming Prize, Japan’s highest award, in 1980.

Xerox and Diversity

Xerox has a long-standing commitment to maintaining an inclusive, progressive workplace environment that values all ways of thinking, cultural differences and new perspectives. Xerox views diversity in the workplace as a moral imperative and a business and competitive advantage. People of all ages and from different backgrounds bring fresh perspectives and create innovative solutions.

Xerox has been consistently recognized by independent organizations for its employee diversity successes as well as fir its commitment to supplier