Interesting (older) article on history of laser printers

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Here

EARLY LASER PRINTER DEVELOPMENT

Xerox started work on laser printers back in 1969. By 1977 Xerox was selling the 9700 (a 120 page-per-minute, full-duplex monster) for about $350,000. Canon brought out the first desktop laser printer, called the LBP-10 in or around 1982. In 1983 Canon started giving private showings of the LBP-CX to key companies in California such as Apple, Diablo and HP. Canon was looking for strong marketing partners who were in the computer business. Canon U.S.A. was very strong in cameras and office products, copiers for example, but didn’t have the connections needed to sell effectively into the data processing world. Evidently, one of Canon’s first stops was the Diablo Systems subsidiary of Xerox Corporation. Diablo was the logical partner because it had the largest market share for letter-quality daisywheel printers and the marketing managers had recently shown their willingness to put the Diablo name on products from other manufacturers. Diablo had just done several OEM deals with Honeywell for dot matrix printers and with Sharp for color ink jet printers. Canon really wanted Xerox as a partner, and Xerox was the first company offered the opportunity to market the CX engine with Canon’s controller

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