In 1937, an American law student Chester Carlson invented a copying process based on electrostatic energy called Xerography. Xerography became commercially available in 1950 by the Xerox Corporation. The word ‘Xerography’ comes from the Greek for ‘dry writing.’
Carlson had been frustrated with the slow mimeograph machine, and the cost of photography, and that lead him to inventing a new way of copying. He invented an electrostatic process that reproduced words on a page in just seconds!
Carlson couldn’t find investors for his new invention. IBM and the U.S. Army Signal Corps turned him down. It took him eight years to find an investor, the Haloid Company, which later became the Xerox Corporation. Carlson filed a patent application in April, 1939, stating, ‘I knew I had a very big tiger by the tail.’
Xerox Corporation also trademarked the name ‘Xerox’ and has protected the name carefully.
