It sounds like an urban myth, but it is true. The most important office machine of the 20th century shipped with a fire extinguisher bolted to the side.
The Xerox 914, released in 1959, was the first copier to work on plain paper. It created the modern office almost overnight. It also had a habit of bursting into flames.
This is not a story about recklessness. It is a story about constraints, trade-offs, and how real businesses behave when the technology works but the edges are still dangerous.
A machine that ran too hot
The 914 used a fusing process that baked toner onto paper using extreme heat. Paper jams were common. When a jam occurred under the fuser, the paper could ignite in seconds.
Xerox knew this. Engineers tried to reduce the risk, but eliminating it entirely would have delayed launch by years. Management decided to ship anyway.
They did not frame this as a defect. They reframed it as something to manage.
Each machine shipped with a small fire extinguisher mounted directly onto the copier. Internally, everyone knew what it was. Externally, it was renamed the âScorch Eliminatorâ.
Users were trained not to panic. If smoke appeared, they were told to discharge the extinguisher into the machine and continue working.
That decision alone tells you a lot about how much value the copier created.
An unsellable product on paper
Even without the fire risk, the Xerox 914 was commercially impossible.
The machine cost roughly $29,500 in 1959 to manufacture and deploy. In todayâs terms, that is several hundred thousand dollars. No office manager would approve that purchase, especially for an unproven technology.
Selling the machine outright was not an option.
So Xerox stopped trying to sell the machine.
Instead, they sold usage.
Leasing the behaviour, not the hardware
The commercial breakthrough was not the copier. It was the pricing model.
Customers leased the machine for a modest monthly fee. They received an allowance of free copies. Every copy beyond that was charged individually.
The copier contained a physical meter. Each press of the button incremented revenue.
Xerox assumed offices would make a few thousand copies per month. In practice, many offices produced that volume per day. Carbon paper disappeared. Duplication became frictionless.
Because customers did not own the machine, they did not care how expensive it was. Because the value was immediate, they tolerated the quirks, including the occasional small fire.
The result was one of the most profitable products in American industrial history.
Why this worked when safer ideas failed
Plenty of safer, slower, more refined copying systems existed. None mattered.
The 914 solved a real, emotional problem: the frustration of manual duplication. Once that pain disappeared, tolerance for everything else increased dramatically.
This is uncomfortable to admit, but common in practice.
Customers do not buy perfection. They buy relief.
What decision-makers still get wrong about this story
Was shipping a fire-prone machine irresponsible?
From a modern compliance perspective, yes. From a commercial survival perspective, it was a calculated risk. The alternative was waiting years while competitors caught up. Xerox chose managed risk over delayed relevance, and the market rewarded speed more than safety at that moment.
Why didnât customers reject such a dangerous product?
Because the value arrived immediately and repeatedly. Every copy saved time, effort, and frustration. The inconvenience of occasional smoke was abstract compared to the daily relief of plain-paper copying. People discount rare risks when daily benefits are obvious.
Was the pricing model more important than the technology?
Arguably, yes. The copier unlocked value, but the lease and per-copy charge unlocked adoption. Without that structure, the machine would have remained a technical curiosity rather than an office standard.
Did Xerox understand how much people would copy?
No. Internal forecasts underestimated usage by an order of magnitude. This was not insight; it was luck combined with optionality. The meter meant that upside flowed to Xerox automatically once behaviour changed.
Could this model work without lock-in?
Only partially. The physical meter, proprietary toner, and leasing terms created a closed loop. Customers did not just use the copier more; they had no easy way to escape paying for that usage once habits formed.
Is this an argument for shipping flawed products today?
Not blindly. The lesson is not âignore defectsâ. It is that defects matter less than unresolved pain. When a product eliminates a major frustration, tolerance rises. When it does not, even small flaws become deal-breakers.
What actually mattered in the end
Xerox did three things that rarely happen together.
They accepted technical imperfection. They removed the purchase barrier. They charged in proportion to value received.
The fires were real. The extinguisher was real. So was the demand.
Most products fail not because they are dangerous or expensive, but because they are safe, affordable, and irrelevant.
The Xerox 914 was none of those. It was risky, costly, and indispensable. That combination, uncomfortable as it is, built an empire.
