Equipment: Rainbow in the Office

Like the movies and TV before it, the copying-machine industry has been eager to move from a purely black-and-white technology into color reproduction. It has long been known that such mammoths as Xerox, RCA and Po laroid were entered in the race. Yet last week, in a preview at Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel, St. Paul-based 3M Co. (formerly Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) was the first to break from the gate. When the gold curtains parted on the stage of the hotel ballroom, 3M proudly revealed two prototypes of a copying machine that can faithfully reproduce in color.

A distant second to Xerox in the duplicating-machine area, 3M began field-testing its “color in color” copier last spring, says it will start delivering the machines on both a selling and a leasing basis within a year. To woo customers, 3M will, beginning early in 1969, open six display centers across the U.S. One of the most important selling points is that 3M’s pioneering copier, by contrast with early color television, boasts high-quality color—in solids and halftones alike.

Borrowing from several “dry” image-forming processes, the machine operates at a rate of one copy per minute, using specially treated paper. The company has so far been silent on the product’s price, but concedes that it will run somewhat higher than the cost of black-and-white copiers. Even so, color copying should catch on for duplicating a wide variety of material, including color-coded organizational charts, splashy advertising layouts and blueprints that actually turn out blue.

Carl A. Kuhrmeyer, vice president of 3M’s duplicating productions division, expects color equipment to eventually capture at least 10% of a fast-growing copying-machine market that already amounts to $1 billion a year. Despite its substantial head start toward that rainbow of riches, 3M has every reason to respect the competition. RCA and Polaroid, which are both newcomers to the duplicating-machine business, are still working on color-copying processes of their own. Then, of course, there is always Xerox, whose color copier, when it comes out, will almost inevitably be a big hit.