Chester Carlson invented the xerography copying process in 1938 and obtained patents, but had difficulty interesting companies in developing it commercially. In 1944, Carlson partnered with Battelle Memorial Institute, and in 1947 they licensed the technology to small photographic paper company Haloid. After years of engineering development, in 1960 Haloid launched the Xerox 914, the first automatic plain paper copier. The 914 was an immediate success, leading to rapid growth for Haloid, renamed Xerox Corporation. Xerography revolutionized document copying worldwide, although Carlson did not become wealthy from his invention before his early death in 1968.
Chester Floyd Carlson, the inventor of xerography, was born in Seattle, Washington in 1906. His early life was marked by hardship; his father, a barber, contracted tuberculosis and arthritis, leading the family to move frequently in search of a better climate for his health. During high school, Carlson took on multiple jobs to support his invalid parents, earning $50-60 per month. Despite these challenges, he excelled academically and was inspired to become an inventor after reading about successful figures like Thomas Edison. From the age of 15, Carlson began recording his invention ideas in a diary, including concepts for a rotating billboard and a disposable handkerchief. His fascination with printing began early; at 10, he published his own typed newspaper and later acquired an old printing press, which he used to publish The Amateur Chemists’ Press. However, the laborious printing process, taking a week to publish his magazine, sparked his interest in finding more efficient duplication methods. The death of Carlson's mother from tuberculosis during his junior year of high school left him to care for his father alone. Nevertheless, he managed to graduate from both high school and college, earning degrees in physics and chemistry from Caltech. The Great Depression made finding work difficult, but after sending over 80 letters, Carlson secured a research position at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Dissatisfied with the role, he transferred to the patent department, where he was exposed to a wide range of innovations. Here, Carlson documented 400 ideas in notebooks, driven by a desire to simplify the copying process for patent specifications, which was then a tedious task requiring retyping or carbon copying to produce the necessary copies. His personal experiences with the difficulties of duplication played a significant role in fueling his inventiveness and ultimately led to the development of xerography.
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