The technology I am examining is the Xerox Machine or xerographic photocopier. The machine was created in 1938, by physicist Chester Carlson. At its time of creation, it was a novel concept. Most scientists had been examining new ways to copy involving photography, whereas Carlson directed his focus towards a little-known area of study—photoconductivity (which is explained briefly in the answer to question 3). At the time of his invention, Carlson worked in a patent office, which required immense paperwork. Carlson was arthritic, making this a painful job for him. He saw a need for a cheap, quick, and practical way to obtain copies of documents in his own line of work (since patents for new inventions are requested frequently, patent offices do not want these requests piling up faster than the office can attend to them) and figured that other people may benefit from his idea as well. He wanted to design a technology that would take a document and make many instant copies of it, to cut down on the time and money that people were spending on obtaining copies.
Before the Xerox machine, obtaining copies of documents was an involved process. One could either send away to another office for an expensive individual copy (which required time, money, and the risk of losing the original document in the mail) or completely retype a document (which allowed for human error if the typist types something wrong and can be time-consuming, depending on the length of the document). However, these solutions were huge improvements beyond the early printing technology of the printing press. In this technology, to “type” an individual page required each wooden letter block to be placed in the correct order to form the words on the page and impressed onto the paper. But even then, one could keep refilling the ink and print the same page over and over—thereby decreasing the time spent copying. From the 1400’s to early 1930’s, printing had always been a very time-consuming task. Carlson acknowledged the need for something to speed up the process and moved away from the conventional methods to create the widely-used machine found in homes, offices, etc. – the photocopier.
Carlson spent time researching imaging processes for months. He decided against researching conventional photography because it was already being widely studied, as mentioned before. He instead worked with electrostatic imaging studies conducted by physicist Paul Selenyi (who is widely considered “the father of xerography”). After reading one of his seminal papers, Carlson learned about photoconductivity. The Xerox company states that the two important phenomena regarding photoconductivity are that two materials “of opposite electrical charges attract and that some materials become better conductors of electricity when exposed to light.” (Xerox) Carlson used this knowledge to create a six-step process to transfer images from one surface to another. He rented out a small lab space and with the help of an assistant, figured out how to transfer an image. He took a sulfur-coated plate, used friction to create a charge, and darkened the room. He then took a microscope slide with dark ink written on it and placed it on the charged plate. He applied a bright light to the plate and slide and thus, the xerographic process was born. Or as Carlson had initially called it, the electrophotographic process. It was later named xerography, which in Greek, can be broken down to mean “dry writing,” emphasizing that it was not reliant on liquid chemicals—like other previous printing technology.
Although Chester Carlson found his discovery to be beneficial, investors did not. From the time of his discovery in 1939 to 1944, more than twenty companies turned down his idea. When discussing the history of his invention, he recollected that “some [investors] were indifferent…several expressed mild interest, and one or two were antagonistic. How difficult it was to convince anyone that my tiny plates and rough image held the key to a tremendous new industry…I became discouraged and several times decided to drop the idea completely. But…I was thoroughly convinced that the invention was too promising to be dormant" (Xerox 6). In 1944, a research organization—the Battelle Memorial Institute—had taken interest and signed a contract with Carlson, allowing them to advance the progress he had made. Three years later, the organization had signed an agreement giving Haloid (which we now recognize as Xerox), a photo-paper company, the right to develop Carlson’s invention into the xerographic machine.
In 1959, the “914” copier was unveiled to the public. Haloid greatly underestimated when they expected roughly five thousand units to be ordered in the next three years. In the following two years, ten thousand orders had been shipped and many more were being produced—so much so that the manufacturers were flooded with orders. Carlson’s idea to improve the way people copied documents and images had magnified into a major industry and revolutionized the way people perform a task (that we now consider simple).
Due to the surrounding economic conditions—the tail end of the Great Depression—as this product was being introduced, it is likely that investors had little trust in an unfamiliar invention. In this time of strong economic downturn (even though the worst of it had already passed), investors did not want to take risks and potentially lose business after already losing so much. By taking an unconventional approach to copying/printing, Carlson made people distrustful of his methods (since the big business and high-tech labs had been focusing on a different method, Carlson’s new method seemed irrelevant and unimportant to investors). Additionally, the aforementioned big businesses and high-tech labs would not have been pleased with his method, as it could become competition for them. When the product was finally unveiled in 1959 however, the public had a different idea—it was a massive success (as expected since it makes the lives of office workers and everyone who needs fast copies much easier).