Electrophotography was invented in an Astoria house
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TIMESLEDGER | QNS.COM | FEB. 18 - FEB. 24, 2022 13
QUEENSLINE
In conjunction with the
Greater Astoria Historcal
Society, TimesLedger
Newspapers presents noteworthy
events in the borough’s
history.
Born Chester Floyd Carlson
on Feb. 8, 1906, in Seattle,
Washington, Chester Carlson
was an inventor best known
for inventing electrophotography.
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His process is used by millions
of photocopiers worldwide
to produce paper copies.
His process was renamed xerography,
which means “dry
writing,” and later abbreviated
to “Xerox.” He invented
this world-changing process
in a house that once stood
at 32-05 37th St. in Astoria,
Queens. The first xerographic
image simply said “Astoria 10-
22-38.”
Carlson recalled both his
parents as being brilliant
and wise. Some of his earliest
memories, however, were of
his mother and father being
ill and unable to support the
family. The future wealthy inventor
started working at age
eight and was the main breadwinner
for the Carlson family
as a high school student.
He had an entrepreneurial
bent from a young age. The
enterprising boy created a
newspaper to sell to friends at
age 10. In his limited free time,
he enjoyed playing with a rubber
stamp printing set and a
toy typewriter. While working
at a print shop in high school,
Carlson vividly recalled the
difficulties of printing a science
magazine to sell to his
classmates. After high school,
the young man graduated from
California Institute of Technology
in 1930. After working odd
jobs to pay tuition, he received
no job offers after graduating
in the early Depression.
Hungry for work, Carlson
came to New York City and
found a position as a research
engineer at Bell Telephone
Laboratories. Working in the
patent department, he noticed
typists making copies of patent
applications by retyping
the entire document. Carlson
believed there was a better
way, and began pursuing his
dream of a new copying machine.
After great trial and
error involving a sulfur house
fire that filled the building
with the smell of rotten eggs,
the undaunted inventor and
his assistant, an Austrian
physicist named Otto Kornei,
made the world’s first xerographic
copy on Oct. 22, 1938,
in Astoria.
Chester Carlson unfortunately
struggled to market his
new creation. More than twenty
companies turned down his
requests for funding. By 1946,
he was on the verge of giving
up on his invention when he
met a business partner from
the Battelle Memorial Institute
in Ohio, who agreed to be
his patent agent. In December
of that year, they agreed to
license the novel technology
to The Haloid Photographic
Company, a small firm in
Rochester, New York.
Sales of the company’s Xerox
photocopiers were slow at
first. The introduction of the
Xerox 914 in 1959, however,
greatly changed the fortunes
of Carlson and Haloid. The
cheap and easy to operate machine
provided paper copies
simply by placing the original
on a sheet of glass and pressing
a button. In 1961, Haloid became
the Xerox Corporation.
In 1968, Fortune magazine
estimated the determined inventor’s
worth at $150 million.
Carlson, however stated his
ambition was “to die a poor
man” by giving away his fortune.
On Sept. 19, 1968, Chester
Carlson died of a heart attack
in a Manhattan theater
while watching the film “He
Who Rides a Tiger.”
At a memorial service,
United Nations Secretary
General U Thant memorialized
the visionary inventor.
For further info, call
the Greater Astoria
Historical Society
at 718-278-0700 or
www.astorialic.org.
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