Answer: Bill Gates is calling it his favorite business book:
A skeptic might wonder how this out-of-print collection of The New Yorker articles from the 1960s could have anything to say about business today. After all, in 1966, when Brooks profiled Xerox, the company’s top-of-the-line copier weighed 650 pounds, cost $27,500, required a full-time operator and came with a fire extinguisher because of its tendency to overheat. A lot has changed since then....You can get the book here.
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http://nalert.blogspot.com/2014/07/follow-money-microsofts-plan-to-cash-in.html
Gates is trash.
Maybe Gates likes the book because it was the time before everyone knew how much Windows would eventually suck.
So interesting how if someone makes it rich, society starts to view them as this revered figure who has the wisdom of the ages on all matters.
Gates is bullshitting, as he often does.
The first Xerox plain paper copier was the Xerox 914, available in about 1960.
The Xerox 914 was the first automatic office copier to make copies on plain paper. It was introduced by Haloid Xerox. A floor-mounted device, it was designed by James G. Balmer of Armstrong-Balmer & Associates, in collaboration with Don Shepardson, John Rutkus and Hal Bogdenoff of Xerox, who had developed an engineering prototype. Xerox named their first product the 914 because it could reproduce documents up to 9 inches by 14 inches in size. It took about 15 seconds for the first copy to come out, and 7 seconds for each additional copy. It was 42 in. high, 46 inches long, 45 inches wide and weighed 648 pounds. The advertising campaign consisted of a TV commercial with a little girl making copies for her father who was dressed as a businessman. A single 914 had a price tag of $29.500 while competitors' wet copiers were sold for about $400, so Xerox copied IBM's leasing system whereby a company could lease the copier for $95 per month (2000 copies free) and 5c per extra copy. Xerox made four versions of the machine: 914, 420, 720 and 1000. The only difference being the motor speed. The 914 could make 7 copies a minute while the 1000 could make 17 copies a minute. The Xerox 914 sold as many units in the first 6 months as what had been projected to be the entire lifetime demand for the product - and the number was that low only because they couldn't physically make enough 914's to meet the demand!
By 1966 Xerox had copiers that were about the size of a small desk and could make 40 copies a minute. At far less than the amount Gates cites in his article.
For fans (or former fans?!?) of The New Yorker...
This is an interesting window on the "progression" at The New Yorker. How, in the William Shawn-edited days of The New Yorker, they might actually do interesting articles on business subjects.
Nowadays, they have the less-partisan Ken Auletta doing some wonderful writing about the digital world and the media landscape, but does anyone else write about business and industry? That is, somebody without a Naderite bent on attacking business and industry? I don't think so.
The New Yorker has become something that isn't just oriented toward a urban-east coast perspective; and it isn't even easy to say that The New Yorker is simply 'liberal-progressive.' The New Yorker is nothing but partisan. David Remnick operates the magazine as a wing of the Obama Administration.
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