sometimes i discover what appears to be a historical fact that is not generally known, but seems like it should be. these are always fairly trivial, but it's still weird.
as far as i can tell, the first document scanner sold on the consumer market was the Datacopy 700 in 1985, and it was a flatbed design. i was trying to find out when flatbeds took over from other approaches, and as far as I can tell it was just... day one. and they nailed the design in one go, you can tell even from the magazine photo that it's going to work exactly like every single scanner you've ever seen, up to the present day.
you can't google this question. you don't even get a shitty, inaccurate listicle about it. but i've looked in magazines and books on internet archive and google books, and i've used google groups to check usenet, and there's a hard cutoff. before 1985, you simply do not see anyone discussing "scanning" or "scanners", unless they're talking about barcodes, then in 85 you see mentions of the Datacopy specifically, and then by 87 you're seeing whole roundups of competing models.
it feels like something someone should know, but it seems that nobody cares. i guess i can't blame them. scanners are the most boring subject in the universe, you own one because you have to and you ignore it fiercely unless you are forced to be aware of it.
