Correct Your Nearsighted Decisions

By Colleen Walsh Fong

Ever heard of a mimeograph?

Or A. B. Dick Company?

If you said “No,” to either question it’s with good reason. You don’t know them because a reigning industry king couldn’t see around the technology corner. He failed to learn the lesson of history that one single technology change can turn an empire.

Copying The Wizard of Menlo Park

The mimeograph, or mimeo for short, was a real break through when it emerged from Thomas Edison’s workshop back in the late 19th century. Its development was credited to Albert Blake (A. B.) Dick and Thomas Edison. And first sold by the Edison Dick Company, which later became A. B. Dick Company.

The reason mimeos were such a big deal is that they gave smaller sized businesses and organizations a way to make multiple copies of typed documents in-house and inexpensively. The technology seems like a real pain today because we’re all communicating through electronic keystrokes. But keep in mind that the internet wasn’t in popular use outside of the scientific community until the mid 1990’s. Most of us didn’t have cell phones until that time and the ones we had were about half the size of a shoebox.

Back to mimeos and A. B. Dick’s big blunder. Any 20th century secretary worth her salt was trained in how to type a mimeograph stencil on a manual typewriter. The typed stencil was applied to a cylinder filled with black ink, and the cylinder was rotated by a handle. Rotation forced the ink through the holes in the stencil and about 100 good, black-ink copies of what was typed onto the stencil were made. Later mimeo models were electric. It sounds messy but it was state of the art and

A. B. Dick Company was the Xerox of the day. I mention Xerox because that’s where Mr. Dick missed the turn he should have taken.

While the King Was Looking Down Xerox Stole His Inky Crown

Somewhere around the 1950’s an inventor brought a process to the attention of whichever A. B. Dick--II or III--was running the company. Today it’s known as the xerography process, which is a fancy word for photocopying onto bond paper. The original Xerox machine was as big as a brontosaurus. And the copies it emitted had fat, blurred type. It was also expensive to make. A. B. Dick is said to have passed on the offer to buy the process, saying, “Why would any one want that machine when they have the mimeograph?” Or something along those lines. Of course anyone who has ever handled a used, messy mimeo stencil or the ink to fill the cylinders can tell you the answer to that question.

The rest is history. Xerox went on to dominate the copying market. A. B. Dick Company eventually put out a line of its own bond paper copiers, but they’d lost too much market share and could never get it back.

Reader Takeaway

Don’t miss your turn. It’s important to keep an open mind when new ideas come your way. Especially with todays rapidly changing technology.

Listen to sales people who cold call you. They may have good ideas including the next thing to hit it big.

Read about new technology and applications and try to see how they may fit or advance your business.

Stay current with popular culture. See movies you don’t want to see just so you know who and what everyone is talking about. I didn’t want to see the Hunger Games, but I liked it enough to go back and read the trilogy on my iPad’s Kindle app--an innovation I didn’t “get” when it first came out.

Open your ears to current music. It can often tip you off to how up-and-coming people think and feel.

Keep your eyes sharp and stay alert so you don’t miss your turn.

Colleen produces custom copywriting and content for branding businesses of all sizes.