These television commercials for Xerox date to 1965, when the company sponsored the broadcast of “Let My People Go: The Story of Israel” on a USA nationwide network of independent stations. The first ad promotes the Xerox 813. At :36 the film shows Ernie Ball, owner of the Ernie Ball Guitars shop in Los Angeles, California, putting an 813 through its paces. At 1:39, another ad shows the Xerox 2400 at work. At 2:00, the 2400 is compared to a “speedy” copier where a typewritten master must first be created, then etched, and various other complicated steps undertaken to make it operate. At 2:38, the 2400 is shown with its elegant simplicity of operation. At 3:11 is an upside down Xerox logo, our mistake. At 3:25, an ad for Xerox featuring the “copy consultant” who comes to visit businesses to determine which Xerox machine is appropriate for your business.
Xerography, a process of producing images using electricity, was invented in 1938 by physicist-lawyer Chester Floyd “Chet” Carlson, who later sold his rights to Haloid, a chemical company. Haloid introduced the first commercial xerographic copier, the Xerox Model A, in 1949. Haloid was renamed Haloid Xerox in 1958, and in 1959 introduced the Xerox 914, which proved to be the first successful commercial plain paper copier. The simple but useful Xerox 813 desktop copier shown in the commercial went into production in October 1963. To make a copy, a user entered the number of copies needed, and then fed the original into the machine. The original would then travel through the machine and emerge in a slot in front, with the copy coming out below. The first duplicator made by Xerox was the 2400, which came on the market in October 1964. “2400” denoted the number of prints produced in an hour (40 copies in a minute). This machine also introduced the industry’s first Automatic Document Feeder.
Ernie Ball was an American entrepreneur and musician who developed guitar-related products. Ball began as a club and local television musician and entrepreneur, building an international business in guitars and accessories that would eventually gross US $40 million a year.
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