Centenary Of The Father Of The Photocopier

One hundred years ago this week Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography, was born.

One hundred years ago this week Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography, was born.

His work would change how people share information and would ultimately generate a document management industry worth more than US$112 billion.

Carlson's invention is the method by which most of the world's printed documents are created in offices today.

Xerography is the technological foundation of copiers, laser printers and digital printers.

It is used to create credit-card statements, personalised direct mailings, instant books and posters as well as countless memos, receipts and records, amongst a range of other material, said Xerox.

Carlson's biographer, David Owen, has estimates that in 2004 there were about four trillion pages printed on products made possible by Carlson's invention of xerography.

Though Carlson died in 1968 aged 62, his passion for creativity and exploration has lived on through generations of Xerox researchers and continued investments in innovation, added the company.

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 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 photo-conductive - their electrical properties changed when exposed to light.

On October 22, 1938, when he was 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 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, generating billions in annual revenue, said the company.

Carlson was posthumously admitted in to the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1981.

His daughter, Catherine Carlson, commented: "Besides being an inventor, Chester Carlson was dedicated to helping others.

Before he died, he had given away over US$100 million to various charitable organisations.

Biographer, David Owen, wrote in his book 'Copies in Seconds': "His invention 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.

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