Chester Carlson

Chester Floyd Carlson (February 8, 1906 – September 19, 1968) was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle, Washington.

Carlson invented electrophotography (now xerography, meaning "dry writing"), producing a dry copy in contrast to the wet copies then produced by the Photostat process; it is now used by millions of photocopiers worldwide.

"Work outside of school hours was a necessity at an early age, and with such time as I had I turned toward interests of my own devising, making things, experimenting, and planning for the future. I had read of Thomas Alva Edison and other successful inventors, and the idea of making an invention appealed to me as one of the few available means to accomplish a change in one's economic status, while at the same time bringing to focus my interest in technical things and making it possible to make a contribution to society as well."

Carlson's father, Olaf Adolph Carlson, had little formal education, but was described as "brilliant" by a relative.

Carlson wrote of his mother, Ellen, that she "was looked up to by her sisters as one of the wisest."

When Carlson was an infant, his father contracted tuberculosis, and also later suffered from arthritis of the spine (a common, age-related disease).

When Olaf moved the family to Mexico for a seven-month period in 1910, in hopes of gaining riches through what Carlson described as "a crazy American land colonization scheme," Ellen contracted malaria.

Because of his parents' illnesses, and the resulting poverty, Carlson worked to support his family from an early age; he began working odd jobs for money when he was eight.

By the time he was thirteen, he would work for two or three hours before going to school, then go back to work after classes.

By the time Carlson was in high school, he was his family's principal provider.

His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 17, and his father died when Carlson was 27.

Carlson began thinking about reproducing print early in his life.

At age ten, he created a newspaper called This and That, created by hand and circulated among his friends with a routing list.

His favorite plaything was a rubber stamp printing set, and his most coveted possession was a toy typewriter an aunt gave him for Christmas in 1916—although he was disappointed that it was not an office typewriter.

While working for a local printer while in high school, Carlson attempted to typeset and publish a magazine for science-minded students like himself.

He quickly became frustrated with traditional duplicating techniques.

He graduated with good—but not exceptional—grades, earning a B.S. degree in physics in 1930, at the beginning of the Great Depression.

He wrote letters seeking employment to 82 companies; none offered him a job.

"The need for a quick, satisfactory copying machine that could be used right in the office seemed very apparent to me—there seemed such a crying need for it—such a desirable thing if it could be obtained. So I set out to think of how one could be made."

As a last resort, he began working for Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City as a research engineer.

Finding the work dull and routine, after a year Carlson transferred to the patent department as an assistant to one of the company's patent attorneys.

Carlson wrote over 400 ideas for new inventions in his personal notebooks while working at Bell Labs.

He kept coming back to his love of printing, especially since his job in the patent department gave him new determination to find a better way to copy documents.

"In the course of my patent work," wrote Carlson, "I frequently had need for copies of patent specifications and drawings, and there was no really convenient way of getting them at that time."

At the time, the department primarily made copies by having typists retype the patent application in its entirety, using carbon paper to make multiple copies at once.

There were other methods available, such as mimeographs and Photostats, but they were more expensive than carbon paper, and they had other limitations that made them impractical.

The existing solutions were 'duplicating' machines—they could make many duplicates, but one had to create a special master copy first, usually at great expense of time or money.

Carlson wanted to invent a 'copying' machine, that could take an existing document and copy it onto a new piece of paper without any intermediate steps.

In 1933, during the Great Depression, Carlson was fired from Bell Labs for participating in a failed "business scheme" outside of the Labs with several other employees.

After six weeks of job-hunting, he got a job at the firm Austin & Dix, near Wall Street, but he left the job about a year later as the firm's business was declining.

He got a better job at the electronics firm P. R. Mallory Company, founded by Philip Mallory (which became the Duracell division of Procter & Gamble), where Carlson was promoted to head of the patent department.

As he said in a 1965 interview, "That set me to thinking about easier ways to do that, and I got to thinking about duplicating methods."

"Well, I had a fascination with the graphic arts from childhood. One of the first things I wanted was a typewriter—even when I was in grammar school. Then, when I was in high school I liked chemistry and I got the idea of publishing a little magazine for amateur chemists. I also worked for a printer in my spare time and he sold me an old printing press which he had discarded. I paid for it by working for him. Then I started out to set my own type and print this little paper. I don't think I printed more than two issues, and they weren't much. However, this experience did impress me with the difficulty of getting words into hard copy and this, in turn, started me thinking about duplicating processes. I started a little inventor's notebook and I would jot down ideas from time to time."

Because of the work he put into supporting his family, Carlson had to take a postgraduate year at his alma mater San Bernardino High School to fill in missed courses.

He then entered a cooperative work/study program at Riverside Junior College, working and going to classes in alternating six-week periods.

Carlson held three jobs while at Riverside, paying for a cheap one-bedroom apartment for himself and his father.

At Riverside, Chester began as a chemistry major, but switched to physics, largely due to a favorite professor.

After three years at Riverside, Chester transferred to the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech—his ambition since high school.

His tuition, $260 a year, exceeded his total earnings, and the workload prevented him from earning much money—though he did mow lawns and do odd jobs on weekends, and work at a cement factory in the summer.

By the time he graduated, he was $1,500 in debt.