The History of Xerox
- Founded in 1906, the Xerox Corp. began as the Haloid Co., an early manufacturer of photographic paper, located in Rochester, New York. In the mid-1940s, the company partnered with Chester Carlson, who developed xerography, an imaging technology that would go on to revolutionize the global business world.
The company combined its expertise in manufacturing photo-sensitive paper with Carlson's xerographic technology. By 1948, Haloid trademarked the name Xerox, and the company introduced the first office copier the following year.
Over the next 10 years, the company's office copiers cornered the business market, and by the 1960s, the word Xerox had entered the language as a verb meaning "to copy." On April 18, 1961, the Haloid Co. officially changed its name to the Xerox Corp. - During the 1960s, Xerox's share of the office copier market was over 90 percent; which made it the focus of a federal anti-trust suit in 1970s. Xerox agreed to end its restrictive licensing agreements, which opened the door for completion in the copier field. As a result, Xerox's share of the market dropped dramatically.
By the 1990s, Xerox rebounded with digital copiers, scanners and laser printers. Today, Xerox continues to manufacture office equipment and has entered the office software field with document management programs. - Born in 1906, Chester Carlson was raised in San Bernardino, California. As a teenager, Carlson worked for a local printer where he began taking notes on the printing process. He went on to earn a degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology and a degree in law from the New York Law School.
After graduation, Carlson began working in the patent department of P.R. Mallory, an electronics manufacturer. He found the system of patent copying inefficient and set about to invent a new way to create document copies.
Carlson applied his degree in physics and his knowledge of printing to find a way to make fast, inexpensive photographic images that could be applied in an office setting. By 1937, Carlson applied for a patent for his invention, called xerography. - Carlson applied one of the most basic laws in physics, that opposites attract, to his invention. In xerography, a document is placed over a positive electrically charged surface. The surface is exposed to the document, and an image is created with the use of negatively charged powder.
Next, a piece of paper is placed on this surface and receives a positive electric charge followed by a dusting of negatively charged powder. The powder is fused onto the paper with heat, and a photocopy of the document is on the paper. - While Xerox had been manufacturing office copiers since 1949, the release of the Xerox 914 in 1959 is what made the company a world-class competitor in office machines. The 914 was the first copier that used plain paper; which made in-house office copying cost efficient.
Named for its ability to handle 9 x 14 inch legal sized documents, the copier combined xerography with new electronic technology, which made the machine small enough to fit in an office setting and affordable. In 1963, Xerox came out with a desktop model, a forerunner to the laser jet printer. In 1985, a Xerox 914 was placed in the Smithsonian Institute because of its integral role in the revolution of the modern business world.
