Throughout 2017, we’ll be sharing highlights from past issues of The Cannata Report, focusing on the stories, people, and events we were covering during different periods in our history.
February 1982 – The Cannata Report debuts under the moniker Copier Marketing Newsletter, a quarterly publication.
May 1982 – The Cannata Report’s second issue highlights the Hannover Fair held each spring in Hannover, Germany. Considered the largest trade fair in the world, the fairgrounds consisted of 23 buildings with two buildings devoted to copiers and copier-related accessories.
For U.S. copier analysts, traveling to Hannover was an opportunity to see what products would be introduced the following year by the Japanese copier companies. Back then, the product timetable was Japan in the first year, Europe the second year, and U.S. in the third year. The technological breakthrough at the 1982 Hannover Fair was Cybernet’s (Kyocera) demonstration of a 15-cpm copier using an amorphous silicon drum–the first use of a ceramic photo receptor. Besides Cybernet, the issue also included coverage of new machines from Canon, Fuji Xerox, Gestetner, Konishiroku (Konica), Panasonic, Ricoh, Sharp, and Toshiba.
March 1987 – Fax was the hot technology at 1987’s Hannover Fair. Ricoh showed its D5000 fax machine, a Group 4 machine that produced laser output on plain paper. Fujitsu also showed its new Group 4 fax machine with a transmission speed of four seconds for a full letter-sized document.
On the printer and copier front, Panasonic introduced an 11-ppm laser printer with a retail price of $2,500. Ricoh showed its new Color 5000, a model that was never sold in the U.S. but would have been priced at $46,500 if it had been. Canon launched its new full color 5-cpm machine simultaneously in Europe and New York with a first copy speed in full color of 28 seconds. Mita introduced 25-cpm and 50-cpm monochrome copiers. Minolta displayed systems for inputting, editing, storage, and printing of any image data. Called MiMS (Minolta Integrated Information and Information Management System), this was Minolta’s response to Toshiba’s optical disk file system which could store 1,000 letter size documents on large disks–about the size of a 33 1/3 LP.
January 1992 – The Cannata Report becomes a monthly publication. The October issue focused on Graph Expo, which required an explanation as to why we were writing about technology that dealers were not currently selling. That issue also included coverage of Mita Copystar’s new headquarters in Fairfield, New Jersey, accompanied by interviews with Senior VP Bob Magrino, VP of Dealer Sales Mario Lenci, VP of Marketing Yoji Shikama, and National Product Support Manager Tony Levi.
March 1997 – We covered the Toshiba dealer meeting in Pasadena, California, hosted by Brian Merriman, VP and GM of the Electronic Imaging Division, as well as the Los Angeles BTA Convention. The buzz was on digital copiers.
March 2002 – This month’s focus was on AIIM 2002 (Association for Imaging & Information Management) in San Francisco with an emphasis on scanners and file solutions.