Section
Printer Brands
Reference overviews of major printer and imaging manufacturers.
10 entries
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Reference overviews of the manufacturers that shaped office printing. What each company built, what it changed about the desk, and where in the archive its lineage is documented.
brand overview
Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta, Inc. is a Japanese imaging company formed by the 2003 combination of Konica Corporation and Minolta Co., Ltd. Both predecessors began in cameras and photographic materials before moving into plain-paper copying, and the merged firm is now known in printing for its bizhub office multifunction peripherals and its AccurioPress and AccurioJet production presses.
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brand overview
IBM
IBM: A History of Its Computer Printers
For roughly half a century IBM was one of the most influential makers of computer printers, spanning high-speed mainframe line printers, the first commercially available laser printing system, desktop dot-matrix printers for the PC era, and enterprise page-printing architectures. IBM no longer makes printers: it spun off its desktop-printer and typewriter operations as Lexmark in 1991 and transferred its high-end Printing Systems Division to a Ricoh joint venture that Ricoh fully absorbed by 2010. IBM's role in printing is now entirely historical.
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brand overview
Lexmark
Lexmark
Lexmark International, Inc. is an American maker of printing and imaging hardware and document software, headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky. Created in 1991 through a leveraged buyout of IBM's printer, typewriter, and keyboard operations, it grew into a global laser and inkjet printer manufacturer before exiting consumer inkjet in the early 2010s to focus on enterprise laser hardware, document software, and managed print services. Lexmark was taken private by an investor consortium in 2016 and acquired by Xerox in 2025.
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brand overview
Kyocera
Kyocera
Kyocera is a Japanese fine-ceramics and electronics manufacturer whose document-technology business, run through Kyocera Document Solutions Inc. (formerly Kyocera Mita), is known for the ECOSYS concept built around a long-life amorphous-silicon ceramic drum kept separate from the toner supply.
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brand overview
Ricoh
Ricoh
Ricoh Company, Ltd. is a Japanese imaging and electronics company, headquartered in Tokyo, that grew from a 1930s sensitized-paper business into one of the world's major office-imaging manufacturers of copiers, multifunction printers, production presses, and facsimile machines. Its printing lineage spans early diazo copiers, the global Aficio MFP brand, and a family of acquired Western marques including Gestetner, Savin, and Lanier, along with the production-print business inherited from IBM.
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brand overview
Xerox
Xerox: History of Xerography, Laser Printing, and Digital Production
Xerox is an American document-technology company that commercialized xerography, the dry plain-paper copying process invented by Chester Carlson, and grew from the Haloid Company of Rochester, New York, into a foundational contributor to laser printing and digital production printing. Its Palo Alto Research Center invented the laser printer and other computing technologies, and its DocuTech system helped establish print-on-demand publishing.
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brand overview
Brother
Brother
Brother is the printing and document-technology brand of Brother Industries, Ltd., a Japanese manufacturer headquartered in Nagoya. Founded in 1908 as a sewing-machine repair business, the company diversified across the twentieth century into knitting machines, typewriters, word processors, fax machines, and eventually laser and inkjet printers, multifunction devices, and P-touch label printers. Its consumer and small-office printing is organized around the HL, DCP, and MFC families, alongside the thermal-transfer P-touch line.
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brand overview
Epson
Epson
Epson is the printing and imaging brand of Japan's Seiko Epson Corporation, headquartered in Suwa, Nagano. Rooted in Seiko Group watch-parts manufacturing, it produced the EP-101 miniature printer (1968), the influential MX-80 dot-matrix printer (1980), the widely emulated ESC/P control language, and piezoelectric Micro Piezo inkjet printheads.
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brand overview
Canon
Canon
Canon Inc. is a Japanese imaging company whose printing business grew out of camera and precision-optics manufacturing. It is significant both as a maker of laser printers, copiers, and multifunction devices and as a long-standing supplier of laser print engines to other brands, most notably Hewlett-Packard. Canon invented the thermal "Bubble Jet" branch of inkjet printing and remains active across consumer inkjet, office multifunction, and commercial production printing.
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brand overview
Hewlett-Packard (HP)
Hewlett-Packard (HP): History of Its Printing and Imaging Business
Hewlett-Packard, founded in 1939 in Palo Alto, California, became one of the defining forces in office and consumer printing from the mid-1980s. It commercialized thermal inkjet printing (ThinkJet, then DeskJet) and brought desktop laser printing to personal computers with the LaserJet, built on a Canon print engine and driven by HP's own Printer Command Language (PCL). HP later expanded into commercial and industrial digital printing through HP Indigo's liquid electrophotography and its own PageWide technology. In 2015 the parent company separated into HP Inc. (personal systems and printing) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
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