Canon - A Company History

How did a company who started out in 1933 making 35mm cameras under the name Kwanon become a name associated with high quality inkjet printers and other digital media products.

The answer is that two young men: Goro Yoshida and Sabura Uchida developed a vision early on in their career and pursued it to perfection.

Operating under the name of Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory they initially worked on 35mm cameras. Output was very low with only a single camera being produced in some month and even during peak production no more than 10 cameras were produced in any one month.

Following the end of World War II company operations were suspended temporarily but production soon began again with the Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory developing a brand new type of shuttered camera.

1947 saw the official change of name from Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory to Canon Camera Co. Inc. This involved further development of a a new head office and combined manufacturing plant in Shimomaruko, Tokyo.

Kwanon, the original brand name, was based on religious beliefs and the decision was made to change it to something more European and modern hence the name Canon.

The remainder of the 1940s and 1950s saw Canon open their New York branch and appointment of a sole European distributor in Switzerland. Canon also devleop an 8mm cinecamera, a magnetic head for VTRs and a zoom lens for television broadcasting.

From 1962 - 1970 Canon made some huge strides with the release of a new type of desktop calendar, the first fax machine, a 4 track VTR head and the first proper photocopier! The product diversity in their portfolio was become obvious to all observers.

1972 saw the arrival of the Canon F-1 35mm SLR camera. For the following 10 years Canon again went from strength to strength developing the worlds first color photocopier and the laser beam printer. These incredible technological developments also saw Canon suffer it's first financial setback in 1975 with a recorded loss for that year.

In 1981 Canon released its first Bubblejet printer. The technology behind this printer was originally designed to be Piezo electric but an accident with a soldering iron demonstrated that rapid heating of ink was also a possible way of transferring ink to paper. The Bubblejet (heated bubbles of ink) printer technology was born.

During the 80's Canons product portfolio became more and more diverse with items like the credit card sized calculator, personal photocopiers, the BJ-80 Bubblejet and a new color inkjet printer becoming available - to name just a few. A notable development was the launch of Canons cartridge recycling program - an environmental move still not followed by some more "modern" companies.

The years leading up to the year 2000 saw Canon continue their incredible product development and release schedule. We saw the BJC-8500 Bubble Jet printer, capable ultra high quality output and being able to produce prints on large format paper. Canon also enhanced their Bubblejet printer range with the S800 and S600.