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Serendipity, Synergy and Innovation: A Conversation with Bob Gundlach
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"Inventing is ... just a little habit that's not going to be given up."
by Gregory R. Pings
The first moments of a conversation with Bob Gundlach are perplexing.
Clearly, he is one of the giants on whose shoulders we all stand. His inventions not
only made xerography commercially viable, they moved the technology into new applications
and markets that no one had considered. It is for this reason that one carries a sense of
awe when preparing for an interview.
The 78-year old physicist is an authority on a number of subjects in addition to
xerography. However, anxiety melts when Gundlach's gentle, sometimes halting voice
answers the telephone. Awe becomes a genuine appreciation for the man.
No wonder Bob Gundlach was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Now
retired from Xerox, he is credited with 155 patents over his 42-year career. He is
the company's most prolific inventor.
Gundlach says the complex xerographic process presented a lot of opportunities for
improvements and patents when he joined Haloid in 1952. "Inventing is in my blood,"
he said. "It's just a little habit that's not going to be given up."
And that is how he spent his career. What follows are Gundlach's answers to questions
that trace the growth of an industry.
What were some of the milestone developments you worked on over the years?
Gundlach: When I joined Haloid, the xerographic process had been refined to
the point where it was able to make high-quality reproductions of print and line
drawings. But it could not reproduce solid areas any wider than typed characters
because the electric fields were concentrated at the edges of the image.
I decided to treat a flexible piece of rayon with a conducting material and stretch it
parallel to the plate so that it would move if the toner beads got blocked. The test
worked but I thought I had better do a control test with a flat metal electrode before
I told anyone. Harvey Maron had tried this approach two years previously but failed.
Harvey said his metal electrode blocked the flow of the carrier-toner mix and prevented
the latent image from developing.
I knew the diameter of the toner beads and I knew that they would never clump together
in any group larger than a pair. I set the distance between the electrode plate and the
charged plate at three toner-bead-diameters. To my surprise, the metal electrode worked
even better than my flexible electrode.
We don't know why Harvey's test failed. Maybe the beads were larger or their size wasn't
uniform. I told my boss, Harold Clark, that Harvey should have gotten the patent. But
Harold said I was the one that made it work so now my name is on the patent. It's called
the "tone tray."
I did not do the math until years later, but the tone tray brought in $240,000 in the
first year - enough to fund an entire research department in those days. That must be why
Harold gave me an 18 percent raise after my first annual review.
Another important breakthrough came about while I was on a trip to Battelle in Columbus,
Ohio. I wondered if the shoeshine cloth the hotel had provided could replace the rabbit
fur brush that we used to clean the toner off the 914's photoreceptor. In addition to the
brush, the 914 used a vacuum cleaner as big as one that was used to clean rugs. That's
one reason why the 914 was so big.
We were trying to make a desktop copier [the 813] and we needed a different way to clean
the photoreceptor in order to conserve space. I took the shoeshine cloth back to the Haloid
chemists to determine what it was made of. Then we tried it and it worked. This allowed
us to shrink the size and weight of the 813.
It must have also cut down on the noise for the 813.
Gundlach: It was absolutely silent. And it also cut down on the dust generated.
Even though the 914 had a filter bag, there was always some dust getting out.
What is the next breakthrough for xerography?
Gundlach: Historically, many of the breakthroughs were not planned, at least not
by the top management. In fact, with our technologies getting more and more mature,
seemingly minor improvements can make an enormous impact on new markets.
For instance, making the machine faster or the color more accurate?
Gundlach: Right. As color has gotten so good it's given us a huge, huge advance
in our marketability. When you break new ground in the capability, it really gives you
new opportunities for marketing. The iGen3 creates new markets that nobody could have
dreamed of.
When you first started at Haloid, how far did you think xerography could go?
Gundlach: (Laughs) I don't pretend to be clairvoyant. I knew that there were
lots of improvements that could enhance the markets.
For example, when I started, it took three minutes to make one copy on flat-plate
equipment. It just wouldn't sell as a copier. But somebody thought of using the equipment
to make paper offset masters - and those masters could make 120 copies a minute. So
people were eager to spend three minutes to make one master that could produce thousands
of duplicates at that rate.
How does a company foster invention?
Gundlach: Give high-level innovators with good track records free reign over
the directions they wish to develop new technologies.
You must trust them to find new applications. Sometimes the planners don't really have
the imagination that the people in the labs have. [The lab] people have a better assessment
of what's possible and what's not possible. And they are usually dreamers, too.
I jokingly say about half of my 150-some patents are based on lucky accidents and the
other half are based on recovery from failure. You learn so much from failure that you
really can come up with still more inventions.
Who were some of the best inventors at Xerox?
Gundlach: Mike Insalaco, who was the head of chemistry. He invented the P-type toners
that were essential to the 914, the 813, and the full gamut of high-speed copiers. It
was essential to formulate toners that would fuse at reasonable temperatures but not
create a film on the selenium drum belt.
Who are the most promising inventors at Xerox today?
Gundlach: It's been 10 years since my retirement so I can't pretend that I know as many
of the inventors there today. But I trust that Dan Hays is leading the way for continuing
improvements.
Dan shows a great understanding of the many interactions of the physics of the complex
processes essential to xerographic systems. There are so many interactions that you have
to make sure when change one step, you're not infringing on the efficacy of another. If
you get a lower-melting toner, for example, it might smear the drum.
How do you invent?
Gundlach: I enjoy a mind-hand synergy that takes place in the laboratory. You've
got to get your hands busy and get doing things and it gives you a much better
understanding. And then the combination of the hand and the mind is accelerated.
You can think of a lot of things. When you try them and find out they don't work, you
discover why they don't work. But you would not have realized that by sitting there
thinking about it. Exploratory researchers called it "getting toner under the
fingernails."
Someone once came into my lab and said: 'Gundlach, you're a good example of
serendipity.'
I wasn't sure he wasn't accusing me of something profane, but when I discovered it
meant 'being prone to lucky accidents' I wasn't the least bit offended.
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| 2006
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| 2005
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| 2004
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| 2003
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| 2002
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| 2001
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