Chester Floyd Carlson

Background

Chester Floyd Carlson was born on February 8, 1906, in Seattle, Washington, to Olaf Carlson and Ellen Carlson. His father suffered disabling illness, and his mother's later illness and death placed substantial financial responsibilities on Carlson while he was still young. The family eventually settled in Southern California, where Carlson worked while completing his education.

Carlson developed an early interest in printing, chemistry, and mechanical experimentation. As a high-school student he worked in printing-related jobs and produced a small magazine concerned with chemistry, activities that connected his need to earn money with his growing interest in putting information onto paper.

Education

Carlson studied at Riverside Junior College, where he initially concentrated on chemistry, before transferring to the California Institute of Technology. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Caltech in 1930. Caltech's scientific and engineering tradition placed him within the expanding American research environment of the interwar period, while his earlier work-study education reflected the financial obstacles he faced.

While working in New York, Carlson attended New York Law School in evening classes and received a law degree in 1939. The school provided professional legal education in the city, and its evening program allowed Carlson to combine legal study with employment in patent work. His scientific training and legal education together supported his later work as a patent attorney and inventor.

Career

After graduating from Caltech during the Great Depression, Carlson worked briefly as a research engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City and then held patent-related positions with Austin & Dix and P. R. Mallory and Company. Bell Laboratories was a major center of industrial communications research, while Mallory manufactured electrical and electronic components and maintained a patent department concerned with protecting technical developments.

At Mallory, Carlson became head of the patent department. The repeated need to duplicate patent drawings and specifications led him to investigate a dry method of copying documents. He conducted experiments in his New York apartment, studying photoconductivity and electrostatic imaging, and on October 22, 1938, produced the first successful electrophotographic copy with the physicist Otto Kornei. Carlson later patented the process, which became known as xerography.

In 1944, Carlson entered an agreement with Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit industrial research organization in Columbus, Ohio, to develop the invention. Battelle's research helped move the process beyond Carlson's initial experiments, and in 1947 the Haloid Company of Rochester, New York, obtained rights to develop xerography commercially. Haloid publicly demonstrated the process in 1948 and introduced the Xerox 914 office copier in 1959.

Carlson left Mallory in 1945 after his invention provided financial security. He continued to work with Haloid until 1955 and afterward served as a consultant to the company, which became Haloid Xerox and later Xerox Corporation. Royalties from his patents made him wealthy, but he devoted much of his later fortune to philanthropy, including support for education, libraries, scientific research, world peace, and Buddhist organizations.

Achievements

• Carlson invented electrophotography, later called xerography, a dry electrostatic copying process that produced images without the wet chemical methods used by Photostat copying. The process became the technical foundation of office photocopying and related document-reproduction technologies.

• Carlson developed the central xerographic concept and secured foundational patents before Battelle Memorial Institute and Haloid Company helped refine the process and commercialize it. The resulting technology led to the Xerox 914, introduced in 1959, and changed the routine reproduction of documents in offices, schools, libraries, and businesses.

• Carlson gave substantial portions of his fortune to charitable causes, including education, libraries, scientific research, world peace, and Buddhist organizations. His philanthropy included support for institutions and research programs whose beneficiaries extended beyond the commercial success of xerography.

Religion

Carlson was a Buddhist whose later religious life included Zen meditation and support for Buddhist institutions. With his wife, Dorris, he participated in a Rochester meditation group that became associated with the Rochester Zen Center, founded by Philip Kapleau in 1966.

Zen Buddhism emphasizes meditation, disciplined attention, compassion, and direct engagement with experience rather than reliance on abstract doctrine alone. The Rochester Zen Center emerged during the growth of organized Buddhist practice in the United States and became part of the American Zen movement associated with Kapleau's teaching lineage.

Politics

Carlson supported majority-rule democratic government and was associated with Democratic politics. His political outlook was expressed less through public office than through support for democratic institutions, social responsibility, and the peaceful improvement of society.

The Democratic Party during Carlson's adult life included liberal, labor-oriented, and reform traditions, particularly in the New Deal and postwar periods. Carlson's later commitment to human welfare, world peace, education, libraries, and other philanthropic causes was consistent with his documented concern for public institutions and collective well-being.

Views

Carlson regarded invention as a means of addressing practical human needs and contributing to society. His own reflections connected technical creativity with perseverance, economic independence, and the desire to make useful changes in the world.

His later philanthropy expressed a broad humanistic outlook. He supported education, libraries, scientific research, world peace, and Buddhist organizations, and he gave away much of the fortune generated by xerography. His interest in Zen practice and meditation formed part of this later concern with ethical responsibility and the human condition.

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."

Personality

Carlson was described as shy, quiet, soft-spoken, methodical, and deeply absorbed in his work. Accounts of his later life also emphasize his modesty, humanitarian concerns, and reluctance to make personal wealth the center of his identity.

Physical Characteristics: Carlson wore glasses and was commonly photographed in formal business clothing.

Quotes from others about the person

• At Carlson's memorial service, United Nations Secretary-General U Thant described him as a man of exceptional moral stature and a humanist whose concern for the future of humanity and commitment to the principles of the United Nations were profound.

Interests

• Carlson was interested in printing, chemistry, graphic arts, meditation, Buddhism, scientific research, education, libraries, and philanthropy.

Connections

Carlson was the son of Olaf Adolph Carlson and Ellen Carlson. His first marriage was to Elsa von Mallon; they married in 1934 and divorced in 1945. He later married Dorris Helen Hudgins, who shared his interest in Buddhism and participated in the Rochester meditation community.

Carlson worked with Otto Kornei during the first successful electrophotographic experiment. His later commercial connections included Battelle Memorial Institute, Haloid Company, and Xerox Corporation, which helped develop and commercialize the process that Carlson had invented.

Father:

Olaf Adolph Carlson

Carlson's father was an itinerant barber whose disabling illness contributed to the family's financial hardship.

Mother:

Ellen Carlson

Carlson's mother supported the family through difficult circumstances and later died of tuberculosis.

Wife:

Elsa von Mallon

Carlson married Elsa von Mallon in 1934; their marriage ended in divorce in 1945.

Wife:

Dorris Helen Hudgins

Carlson's second wife shared his interest in Buddhism and participated in the Rochester meditation community.

Collegue :

Otto Kornei

Worked with Carlson during the first successful electrophotographic experiment in 1938.

References

• My Years with Xerox: The Billions Nobody Wanted John H. Dessauer's account of Xerox, the commercialization of xerography, and Carlson's relationship with the company.
  1971
• Copies in Seconds: Chester Carlson and the Birth of the Xerox Machine A biographical account of Carlson and the development of xerography and the Xerox copying machine.
  2005
• Copies in Seconds: How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg—Chester Carlson and the Birth of Xerox David Owen's history of Carlson's invention, the Haloid Company, and the emergence of Xerox.
  2005