Osaka, 1934: Shigeo Mita founds a business dealing in diazo blue-line printing, incorporated as a joint-stock company in 1948. By the eighties his firm had become the copier industry’s one true specialist. Canon made cameras, Sharp made calculators, Ricoh made more or less everything; Mita Industrial Co., Ltd. made copiers, full stop, and built its entire identity on the fact. Dealer folklore of the period held that this was precisely why you bought one — the company that does only one thing is the company that has become expert at it.

The positioning was global and loud. American viewers got the “One Thing On Our Mind” spots in 1989 (the jingle remembered as “Mita — is it!” belongs to the same era, though its exact wording goes unverified by our research department). British football crowds got it across Aston Villa’s chest from 1983 — see Plate No. 7 overleaf. Behind the advertising sat a genuinely big machine: roughly US$1.2 billion in worldwide sales, subsidiaries everywhere (Mita Copystar America from 1973), and that 1992 share of 10.3 per cent — fourth behind Canon (29.1), Sharp (20.6) and Xerox (13.4), and ahead of Toshiba.

The machines themselves were marathon runners. A 1979 Copystar DC-15 — 15 cpm, analog, A3 — would still be making copies in Luxembourg in 2008, winning the successor company’s own longevity competition against a field that included a Mita 600D and DC-131 of 1980 and a DC-121 of 1982. Our research department reports this from the far side of the decade and asks that it be entered as evidence of character.

Through the nineties the DC analog line ran from an 18 cpm entry unit to the 92 cpm DC-9285 flagship, with duplex standard from mid-range up — several models even shipped with duplex switched on by default, an unusually early paper-saving stance. And in the middle of that range sat the machine below: the one this magazine has personal history with, drawn here with the care it is owed.

The entry ticket

The ladder starts at the DC-1820 — 18 cpm, feeder and sorter both on the options list, and registered under the Energy Star programme back when that made a brochure paragraph. One rung up, the DC-2360 gives the small office 23 cpm and the same options. These went to the church office, the two-partner practice, the school front desk — buyers who would meet one Mita, learn its noises, and keep it past several governments.

Against Sharp’s SF-2022 — the 1992 twentieth-anniversary model at 22 cpm, likewise optional feeder and sorter — the machines are near-twins. The difference was the handshake: the Sharp dealer also sold calculators; the Mita dealer sold copiers, full stop, and made sure you noticed the stop.

The engine room

The mid-range is where the house doctrine shows. The DC-3060 does 30 cpm and, unusually, still holds 25 with the paper turning over. The DC-4090 makes duplex standard and holds 34. And the DC-4685F, 46 cpm, ships with duplex switched ON from the factory — the machine assumes two sides, and single-sided copying is the setting you must go looking for. In an era when most makers sold the duplex unit as an accessory, Mita sold it as a worldview.

The named rival here is Canon’s NP-6030 of 1992, 30 cpm, a fine ecological citizen with the duplex unit sitting politely on its options sheet. Canon sold you the second side; Mita assumed you would come round eventually and saved everyone the meeting. The legal practice running double-sided bundles all afternoon knew which philosophy it was billing for.

The summit

Above 50 the range earns its finishing. The DC-5590 brings 55 cpm with sorter and stapler; the DC-8095 does 80 and still holds 68 in duplex; the DC-9285 crowns the line at 92 cpm, 78 two-sided. And in the middle of them sits the DC-6500 — 65 cpm of touch-panel confidence with 6,300 sheets in the bunker — a machine about which this magazine has already said quite enough on p. —, except to note that the whole tier orbits it.

The comparison that matters is Xerox’s 1090: 92 cpm, staples to 50 sheets, automatic duplex — and a 1985 launch date, a decade’s head start and litigation-legend status included. The DC-9285 answers the number and holds 78 with the paper turning; the print room choosing between them was choosing between a reputation and a duplex habit. Both, the record suggests, ran forever.