Xerox 9700

I’m thinking I came face to face with my first bona fide laser printer in the summer of 1982, back when the typewriter was still holding fast and children grew up learning how lasers were developed to cut through steel. So, forget all you know about that friendly little unit humming away on your desktop, the Xerox 9700 was a good city block long and capricious as hell. It swallowed toner by the barrel and spat out paper by the ream . . . box after box of reports they’d never read, but look the wrong way and the paper jams were legend.

Photo from the DigiBarn Computer Museum.