Printing Without Ink

On October 22, 1938, Chester Carlson stood in a rented room above a bar in Astoria, Queens, and made the first xerographic copy. He coated a zinc plate with sulfur, charged it with static electricity, laid a glass slide inscribed "10-22-38 ASTORIA" on top, exposed it to light, and dusted it with lycopodium powder. The powder stuck to the charged areas. He pressed wax paper against the plate and peeled off a perfect copy. Dry printing. No ink. The photocopier was born.

Carlson was a patent attorney who spent his days copying documents by hand. Carpal tunnel, eye strain, tedium. He wanted a better way. He studied photoconductivity -- the property of certain materials to conduct electricity when exposed to light -- and combined it with electrostatics. The idea was simple: charge a surface, expose it to an image, and the light would discharge some areas while leaving others charged. Toner sticks to the charged areas. Transfer to paper. Done.

a photocopier, the commercial product that descended from chester carlson's 1938 xerography invention. source: wikimedia commons

Nobody wanted it. Over 20 companies turned Carlson down, including IBM and General Electric. It took until 1959 -- twenty-one years -- for the Xerox 914 to reach the market. When it did, it changed everything. Offices could reproduce documents instantly. Information could be duplicated without retyping. The copier democratized documents the way the printing press had democratized books.

October 22, 1938, is the day copying became electric. Carlson saw a problem everyone else had accepted as permanent and designed a solution no one believed they needed. The first copy was made above a bar in Queens with sulfur, static, and stubbornness. Twenty-one years later, it was in every office in America. Patience is a design principle too.