Every good superhero has a great backstory. A tale of their beginnings.
A recounting of their origin and the obstacles that shaped them into who they
are when we meet them. Today that superhero is the office copy
machine. Unsung, sure. Overlooked, definitely. Invaluable, without a doubt.
Allow the splendor of Wikipedia’s universal brainpower to
recount the tale of the humble photocopier. Our
story begins in the late 1930s in a New York patent office…
Chester Carlson, the inventor of photocopying, was
originally a patent attorney, as well as a part-time researcher and inventor.
His job at the patent office in New York required him to make a large number of
copies of important papers. Carlson, who was arthritic, found this to be a
painful and tedious process. This motivated him to conduct experiments with
photo conductivity.
Carlson used his kitchen for his
"electrophotography" experiments, and, in 1938, he applied for a
patent for the process. He made the first photocopy using a zinc plate covered
with sulfur. The words "10-22-38 Astoria" were written on a
microscope slide, which was placed on top of more sulfur and under a bright
light. After the slide was removed, a mirror image of the words remained.
Carlson tried to sell his invention to some companies, but failed because the
process was still underdeveloped. At the time, multiple copies were most
commonly made at the point of document origination, using carbon paper or
manual duplicating machines, and people did not see the need for an electronic
machine. Between 1939 and 1944, Carlson was turned down by over 20 companies,
including IBM and General Electric—neither of which believed there was a significant
market for copiers.
In 1944, the Battelle Memorial Institute, a non-profit
organization in Columbus, Ohio, contracted with Carlson to refine his new
process. Over the next five years, the institute conducted experiments to
improve the process of electrophotography. In 1947, Haloid Corporation (a small
New York-based manufacturer and seller of photographic paper) approached
Battelle to obtain a license to develop and market a copying machine based on
this technology.
Haloid felt that the word "electrophotography" was
too complicated and did not have good recall value. After consulting a
professor of classical language at Ohio State University, Haloid and Carlson
changed the name of the process to "xerography," which was derived
from Greek words that meant "dry writing." Haloid called the new
copier machines "Xerox Machines" and, in 1948, the word
"Xerox" was trademarked. Haloid eventually changed its name to Xerox
Corporation.
In 1949, Xerox Corporation introduced the first xerographic
copier called the Model A. Xerox became so successful that, in North America,
photocopying came to be popularly known as "xeroxing." Xerox has
actively fought to prevent "Xerox" from becoming a genericized
trademark.
While the word "Xerox" has appeared in some dictionaries
as a synonym for photocopying, Xerox Corporation typically requests that such
entries be modified, and that people not use the term "Xerox" in this
way. Some languages include hybrid terms, such as the widely used Polish term
kserokopia ("xerocopy"), even though relatively few photocopiers are
of the Xerox brand.
In the early 1950s, Radio Corporation of America (RCA)
introduced a variation on the process called Electrofax, whereby images are
formed directly on specially coated paper and rendered with a toner dispersed
in a liquid.
During the 1960s and through the 1980s, Savin Corporation
developed and sold a line of liquid-toner copiers that implemented a technology
based on patents held by the company.
Before the widespread adoption of xerographic copiers,
photo-direct copies produced by machines such as Kodak's Verifax were used. A
primary obstacle associated with the pre-xerographic copying technologies was
the high cost of supplies: a Verifax print required supplies costing USD $0.15
in 1969, while a Xerox print could be made for USD $0.03 including paper and
labor. The coin-operated Photostat machines still found in some public
libraries in the late 1960s made letter-size copies for USD $0.25 each, at a
time when the minimum wage for a US worker was USD $1.65 per hour; the Xerox
machines that replaced them typically charged USD $0.10.
Xerographic copier manufacturers took advantage of a high
perceived-value of the 1960s and early 1970s, and marketed paper that was
"specially designed" for xerographic output. By the end of the 1970s,
paper producers made xerographic "runability" one of the requirements
for most of their office paper brands.
Some devices sold as photocopiers have replaced the
drum-based process with inkjet or transfer film technology.
Among the key advantages of photocopiers over earlier
copying technologies are their ability:
- to use plain (untreated) office paper
- to implement duplex (or two-sided) printing
- Able to scan several pages automatically with an ADF
- to sort and/or staple output
If your business needs
a Sharp
copy machine, contact A1 Image
today for the best deals and service to buy or lease a copier.
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