Background
Chester Floyd Carlson was born on February 8, 1906, in Seattle, Washington. Illness and poverty in his family forced him to become his parent's main financial support while he was in his teens.
Chester Floyd Carlson was born on February 8, 1906, in Seattle, Washington. Illness and poverty in his family forced him to become his parent's main financial support while he was in his teens.
Carlson worked his way through college, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from California Institute of Technology in 1930. While working at Mallory, Carlson attended New York Law School at night, receiving his law degree in 1939.
After trying in vain to gain employment as a physicist in California he left for New York City, where the P. R. Mallory Company, an electrical manufacturing firm, offered him a position in its patent department. This job proved to be of crucial importance to Carlson's career as an inventor in two ways. First, he was introduced to patent law and procedures; second, the need to duplicate patent drawings and specifications made him aware of the inadequacies of the existing photostat process for copying documents. Carlson stayed at Mallory until 1945, eventually becoming head of the patent department. Carlson had neither the money, laboratory facilities, nor mechanical talent to transform his experiments into a working copy machine ready for public use. Therefore, in 1944 he reached an agreement with the Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit industrial research laboratory, to develop his invention beyond its first stages.
Three years later the Haloid Company of Rochester, New York, undertook the final conversion of xerography into a commercial product. Haloid, which became Haloid-Xerox and then Xerox, publicly demonstrated xerography in 1948 and offered the first Xerox copying machines for sale in 1959. As xerography became a complex technical and business venture Carlson withdrew from active involvement with it, except for serving as a consultant to the Xerox Corporation. By 1945 his invention brought him sufficient financial security so that he could retire from Mallory.
In 1951, Carlson's royalties from Battelle amounted to about $15,000 (in current terms, $141 thousand). Carlson continued to work at Haloid until 1955, and he remained a consultant to the company until his death. From 1956 to 1965, he continued to earn royalties on his patents from Xerox, amounting to about one-sixteenth of a cent for every Xerox copy made worldwide.
Chester Carlson was politically affiliated. He was in backing of majority rule government. So he was taking after Democratic gathering of his time. In spite of the fact that he was energetic to acquire any change this world. He needed to upset the world by his work. He had experienced numerous hardships of life. It has been important to take some conventional requests from any political or just gathering. So it was fundamental for him to stay in contact with neighborhood political gathering to draw out his work all the more autonomously and openly. He had great perspectives on any part identified with him since he generally needed their backing. So he had experienced numerous political individuals however never gave any perspectives and open deliberation remarks to get himself in a bad position, which may come about into nothing with the exception of misfortune.
Quotations:
"You are successful the moment you start moving toward a worthwhile goal."
"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."
"What Bell is to the telephone - or, more aptly, what Eastman is to photography - Haloid could be to xerography."
"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."
Chester Carlson had shy, limited and quiet characteristics. He was simple man just getting involved in his things most of the time. It is thought that he was left handed by his working criteria and writing things.
Physical Characteristics: He had great hair style. He was so indulged in his work that due to eye sight problem he used to wear glasses which made his personality more attractive and mature. He used to free up in proper suit.
Quotes from others about the person
To know Chester Carlson was to like him, to love him, and to respect him. He was generally known as the inventor of xerography, and although it was an extraordinary achievement in the technological and scientific field, I respected him more as a man of exceptional moral stature and as a humanist. His concern for the future of the human situation was genuine, and his dedication to the principles of the United Nations was profound. He belonged to that rare breed of leaders who generate in our hearts faith in man and hope for the future.
In the fall of 1934, Carlson married Elsa von Mallon, whom he had met at a YWCA party in New York City. Carlson described the marriage as "an unhappy period interspersed with sporadic escapes." They were divorced in 1945. Carlson married his second wife, Dorris Helen Hudgins.
