January 1, This Day in History – May 3rd

On May 3rd, 1938, American physicist and inventor Chester Carlson filed a patent for his revolutionary invention, the photocopier, forever changing the way information was reproduced and shared in offices around the world. Today, we take a moment to remember and appreciate the impact of this groundbreaking innovation.

Chester Carlson was born on February 8, 1906, in Seattle, Washington. As a young patent attorney working in New York City, Carlson was frustrated by the time-consuming and laborious process of manually copying documents. This frustration, coupled with his background in physics and chemistry, inspired him to seek a more efficient solution to duplicating documents. After years of experimentation and research, Carlson finally developed a method that he called “electrophotography.”

On October 22, 1938, in a makeshift laboratory in Astoria, Queens, Carlson conducted the first successful electrophotographic experiment. He placed a zinc plate coated with sulfur onto a slide and then covered it with a sheet of wax paper. A glass slide with text was placed on top, and the entire assembly was exposed to a bright light. After applying an electric charge to the zinc plate, the text from the glass slide was transferred onto the wax paper.

Despite the success of the initial experiment, it would take nearly two decades before the photocopier became a commercial success. In 1959, the Xerox Corporation introduced the Xerox 914, the first automatic, plain-paper copier. The machine was a huge hit and revolutionized the way offices functioned. Today, photocopiers are indispensable tools in workplaces, schools, and libraries around the world, and they have made the dissemination of information faster and more efficient than ever before.

On this day, we celebrate the brilliance and perseverance of Chester Carlson, the inventor of the photocopier. His determination to solve a common problem has transformed the way we work and share information, leaving a lasting impact on modern society.