History of Lexmark Laser Printers

According to Kentucky.com, website of the Lexington Herald-Leader newspaper, a project undertaken in 1989 by IBM resulted in what we now know today as Lexmark. Based out of Lexington, Lexmark is currently one of the area's largest employers. The first desktop laser printer was called the IBM 4019 and it hit the market in 1989. According to now CEO Paul Curlander (the product manager in 1989), the process took three years and it was begun with no technology. Lexmark is a spin off of IBM, thus the brand of the printer was IBM. HP had introduced their first laser print, the LaserJet in 1984 for $3,500, and Apple followed in 1985 with their laser printer that sold for $7,000.

IBM did have laser printers at the time, but they were designed to work with mini-computers and were big enough to sit on a table. IBM wanted to halve their size and not make them overly heavy (HP's printer at the time weighed 75 lbs.). HP's printer also reportedly did not spit out pages in the correct order and the heat of the machine made it impossible to print an envelope without sealing it. These were two issues that the IBM team wanted to avoid.

Once the design was accepted, then the question was where should they build it. At the time, Curlander was living in Boulder, CO. Due to Lexington's solid history with office products and material science knowledge, they decided it would be an ideal location.

The actual design began in 1986, and as with any new invention, the Lexington-based team had their share of troubles. IBM had developed their OS/2 operating system and wanted to have a printer driver created for the 4019. Also, when experimenting with the printer's fusers, the first design didn't work at all, and an entire department was tasked with working only on that technology.

For inspiration, Curlander purchased the very HP product they were trying to best, the LaserJet, and put one in everyone's office. According to Curlander, the mantra at the time was "twenty-five percent faster." The first test print was on April 14, 1987 at 5:09pm, and it still resides in a binder kept by Harry Cooper, then the software development person and now the director of their digital imaging systems division. By early May 1987, the printer was able to produce pages with both text and pictures.