About canon

Certainly best known for its optical products -- for viewing the world, and what we make of it, as clearly and perfectly as possible -- Canon Inc. was originally founded in Japan in 1937 as the Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory. Japan's first 35mm camera was called the Kwanon, a name which led to renaming the business Canon in 1947. The company's first step into American markets occurred in 1955 when they opened their first New York branch. One development after another kept the company in the lead with optics and electronics, from the first television broadcast-worthy field zoom lens created in 1958 to the first 10-key calculator in 1964, adding SLR technology to Canon cameras in 1965. Along similar lines, the world's first microchip-embedded camera was released in 1971, the Canon AE-1, which is arguably the most widespread and successful product the company had produced to date.

However, while customers were busy creating pictures as perfect as life, itself with the superior Canon lenses and camera, the company was equally busy developing ways for their customers to recreate that same photo-grade quality in print form. In 1982, Canon copy machines debuted as the first to offer replaceable ink cartridges. And in 1985, the company changed the way the world prints with Canon Inkjet printers, marking the eventual obsolescence of dot-matrix methods. Just for a hint of what's ahead, the company gained over 2,000 new patents in 2008, and it is consistently in the top five worldwide companies for new patents, every year.