Massive Old School Printers

By Queuebot in Gadgets, Hacks & Mods on Apr 9, 2009 at 3:26 pm

Back in the days, printers are big. Really big. The News in Print has a nifty post about 6 of the biggest old school printers ever made. This one above is the Xerox 9700:

The Xerox 9700 is largely recognised as the world’s first laser toner printer, ‘largely’ being the operative word. Looking more like a kitchen work top than a printer, it would perhaps be a little sexist to suggest that’s why the pretty lady seems right at home.

It is hard to find another reason why she appears to be so happy: when it was released in 1977, the 9700 retailed at $500,000 and took up 5 meters x 4 metres of floor space and produced 120 pages every minute. A sparkling investment.

Link – via thrivecore

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by greeneagle.

Tags: printer, retro, Xerox

Neat stuff from the NeatoShop:

Alex
Apr 9th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I edited this heavily – neat find, greeneagle!
Sue Dunham
Apr 9th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I got my start in the printing business running a similar one in the early ’70s. They were so exclusive you could only lease them.
Byrd Brain
Apr 9th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Ha! Those foolish people of the 1970′s. Why didn’t they just buy the same kind of printers we have now instead of these big ones?
Chakolate
Apr 9th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I know why she’s smiling – she doesn’t have to type it all herself with carbons. Do you know how many times you had to type something over again in order to produce 120 copies? Each carbon copy got worse than the one before it, and by the fifth or sixth they were unreadable.

Okay, I’m a dinosaur. I remember those machines (or the ones that came just after) with tremendous fondness.
Croccydile
Apr 9th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
120 pagers per minute is impressive even today. A much more modern Xerox high speed monochrome printer we have at work fits on a desk and manages 90.
Foreigner1
Apr 10th, 2009 at 2:58 am
I remember the smell of of that machine… Yeah well, I must be a dinosaur too, because I can remember that at my dad’s office they had one of those (I dunno if it was this type or some other, but similar) and you could copy YOUR HAND!!! While even 8-9 years later in my school we used an old mechanical hand-cranked stencil-machine with crumbly courier-type font to crank out large-volume texts.
Ray
Apr 10th, 2009 at 9:41 am
I ran one of these as well. Ours had an enormous collator attached.
Johnny Cat
Apr 10th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Reminds me of the one Jane Fonda battles in 9 to 5.

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