Chester F. Carlson, the inventor of the first xerographic machine, grew up in a poor family. After reading about Thomas Edison, he was impressed with the idea of inventing things that would provide economic security. In 1930 Carlson graduated from California Institute of Technology with a degree in Physics. He later went to law school and became a patent attorney.

During the course of his patent work, Carlson found a need for developing inexpensive copies for patent specifications. For many months he spent his spare time studying photoconductivity and soon began to conduct experiments which ultimately led him to discover the principles of xerography. On October 22, 1938, in a back room of a house in Astoria, Long Island, he worked with German refugee and physicist Otto Kornei on a breakthrough experiment. In Carlson’s own words: “I went to the lab that day and Otto had a freshly prepared sulphur coating on a zinc plate. We tried to see what we could do toward making a visible image. Otto took a glass microscope slide and on it printed in India ink the notation: `10-22-38 ASTORIA.’

“We pulled down the shade to make the room as dark as possible, then he rubbed the sulphur surface vigorously with a handkerchief to apply an electrostatic charge, laid the slide on the surface and placed the combination under a bright incandescent lamp for a few seconds. The slide was then removed and lycopodium powder was sprinkled on the sulphur surface. By gently blowing on the surface all the loose powder was removed and there, on the surface, was left a perfect duplicate in powder of the notation which had been printed on the glass slide.”

Carlson called the process electro-photography, but soon the name was changed to xerography. After filing his patent application, Carlson tried to sell his idea to a number of companies that politely turned him down. In 1940, Carlson demonstrated his invention to IBM executives who agreed that he had an interesting idea; however, they also said, “No.”

After four years of further research, testing and fruitless sales efforts, Carlson struck a deal with Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit industrial research organization in Columbus, OH. Batelle agreed to further develop the invention for a 60 percent interest in the proceeds, with Carlson keeping the remaining 40 percent. From this point on, organized applied research increased the commercial prospects of Carlson’s invention. In 1946, Batelle was approached by The Haloid Company (now Xerox) to acquire the rights to xerography in exchange for royalties.

When asked to look back on the events, Carlson offered these words: “I am extremely satisfied with the way everything has turned out. There were times when I felt impatient. You see, 15 years elapsed between the time I started working on xerography and the time the first piece of commercial equipment went on the market. And for exactly 10 of those years I was working on my own limited resources. But I am very lucky, really, to have had the good fortune to make a tie-up with two such high grade organizations as Battelle and Haloid.”

In his later years, Chester Carlson’s major activity became philantropy. He gave a large part of his royalties to worthwhile causes, mostly related to education. By 1964, Carlson’s share of xerographic royalties amounted to over $3 million and it was increasing at the rate of about a million dollars a year. “If he had kept everything he earned,” his wife said in 1969, “he would have had well over 150 million dollars. But of course he gave away what is now worth over 100 million dollars.”

Despite his affluence, Carlson remained a simple man.