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Xerox
Where
would the tattoo
world be without
the copy machine?
Enlarging, reducing,
flipping images,
and ripping off
designs is all
part of the everyday
running of a tattoo
shop. We take the
machine for granted
until it goes down
and have to find
the closest copy
shop. We have Chester
Carlson to thank
for this handy
invention and this
wins him a spot
in tattoo history!
 Carlson was born in Seattle, WA
on February 8, 1906 and moved to
San Bernardino, CA with his family.
His father was barber who developed
crippling arthritis. When, at the
age of 14 both his mother and father
contacted tuberculosis, Chester
became the main source of income
for his family.
Despite all of these hardships
Chester managed to enroll in a
junior college at Riverside, CA
and later earned a degree in Physics
from the California Institute of
Technology in 1930. After several
dead-end jobs Carlson entered night
school to become a patent lawyer.
He was always in need of more copies
of patents and there were only
two choices at the time to get
more: either send the patents out
to be photographed or laboriously
write new ones. 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 minutes.
Many experiments and years of work
led up to Carlson's first patent
issued in October of 1937 for "electrophotography.
Over the next few years IBM, Kodak,
General Electric and many other
major corporations shot down Carlson's
idea. Two small companies stepped
forward, Battelle and Haloid, and
invested money and manpower into
the project, and in 1948 demonstrated
electro-photography to the world.
At the same time, Haloid came up
with a better name for the process.
Somehow the name electro-photography
was not very catchy. An Ohio State
professor suggested xerography
from the Greek words xeros for "dry" and
graphics for "writing". Haloid
named its first photocopier the
XeroX Model A, the last X being
added to make the name similar
to that of Kodak, another Rochester
corporation. In 1958, Haloid officially
changed their name to Haloid Xerox,
and finally to just Xerox in 1961.
Xerox Corporation also trademarked
the name "Xerox" and has protected
the name carefully. In 1980s the
US Postal Service recognized Chester
Carlson's achievements and issued
a 21-cent stamp honoring him.
Tattoo Archive © 2004
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