One hundred years ago today Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography, was born - a man
whose genius would forever change how people share information and would ultimately generate
a document management industry worth more than $112 billion.
Carlson's invention is the method by which most of the world's printed documents we see in
offices are created today. Xerography is the technological foundation of copiers, laser
printers, and digital production printers. It is used to create credit-card statements,
personalized direct mailings, instant books and posters as well as countless memos,
receipts, records and much more.
Carlson biographer David Owen estimates that in 2004, there were about 4 trillion pages
printed on products made possible by Carlson's invention of xerography. Though Carlson
died in 1968 at age 62, his passion for creativity and exploration has lived on through
generations of Xerox researchers and continued investments in innovation.
As a boy Carlson suffered such wretched poverty that his family lived for a time in a
decaying shed. Socially isolated by the poverty, he developed a singular way of way of
looking at things. By the time he was 12, he determined that the best way to escape his
situation was to invent something.
After obtaining a degree in physics and a sizeable debt, he found work as an assistant
to a patent attorney, a paper-intensive job where he saw first-hand the need for a simple,
convenient method of making copies.
Carlson began experimenting with electrostatic charges and materials that were
photoconductive - their electrical properties changed when exposed to light. On Oct. 22,
1938, when he was just 32, he created the first xerographic image. The process took its
name from the Greek words for "dry" and "writing."
It took another two decades and a bet-your-company investment by a small upstate New York
firm named The Haloid Company - which became Xerox Corporation in 1961 - before people
could use Carlson's process to make black-and-white copies simply, quickly and on plain
paper. The product was the Xerox 914 automatic plain-paper office copier, which Fortune
magazine called "the most successful product ever marketed in America."
By the time Carlson died, his vision was fulfilled and Xerox was well on its way to
success as the world's foremost expert on color imaging, printing, document management
and related services, generating billions in annual revenue. Carlson was posthumously
inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1981.
His invention changed forever the way people worked. "It gave ordinary people an
extraordinary way of preserving and sharing information, and it placed the rapid exchange
of complicated ideas within the reach of almost everyone," writes Owen in his 2004 book,
Copies in Seconds.
That's some legacy. Happy 100th birthday, Chester.
|
