37 Facts About Chester Carlson

Chester Floyd Carlson was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle, Washington.

When Chester Carlson was an infant, his father contracted tuberculosis, and later suffered from arthritis of the spine.

When Olaf moved the family to Mexico for a seven-month period in 1910, in hopes of gaining riches through what Chester Carlson described as "a crazy American land colonization scheme," Ellen contracted malaria.

Chester Carlson's mother died of tuberculosis when he was 17, and his father died when Carlson was 27.

Chester Carlson began thinking about reproducing print early in his life.

Chester Carlson held three jobs while at Riverside, paying for a cheap one-bedroom apartment for himself and his father.

At Riverside, Chester Carlson began as a chemistry major, but switched to physics, largely due to a favorite professor.

Chester Carlson wrote letters seeking employment to 82 companies; none offered him a job.

Chester Carlson wrote over 400 ideas for new inventions in his personal notebooks while working at Bell Labs.

Chester Carlson kept coming back to his love of printing, especially since his job in the patent department gave him new determination to find a better way to copy documents.

Chester Carlson wanted to invent a 'copying' machine, that could take an existing document and copy it onto a new piece of paper without any intermediate steps.

In 1933, during the Great Depression, Chester Carlson was fired from Bell Labs for participating in a failed "business scheme" outside of the Labs with several other employees.

Mallory Company, founded by Philip Mallory, where Chester Carlson was promoted to head of the patent department.

In 1936, Chester Carlson began to study law at night at New York Law School, receiving his LL.

Chester Carlson studied at the New York Public Library, copying longhand from law books there because he could not afford to buy them.

Chester Carlson began supplementing his law studies with trips to the Public Library's science and technology department.

Chester Carlson pressed on with his experiments in addition to his law school studies and his regular job.

Chester Carlson filed his first preliminary patent application on October 18,1937.

Chester Carlson hired an assistant, Otto Kornei, an out-of-work Austrian physicist.

Chester Carlson knew that several major corporations were researching ways of copying paper.

Chester Carlson prepared a zinc plate with a sulfur coating, darkened the room, rubbed the sulfur surface with a cotton handkerchief to apply an electrostatic charge, then laid the slide on the plate, exposing it to a bright, incandescent light.

Years later, when Xerox stock was soaring, Chester Carlson sent Kornei a gift of one hundred shares in the company.

Chester Carlson was turned down for funding by more than twenty companies between 1939 and 1944.

When Chester Carlson was close to giving up on getting his invention from a proof-of-concept to a usable product, happenstance provided a solution.

In 1947, Chester Carlson was becoming worried that Battelle was not developing electrophotography quickly enough; his patent would expire in ten years.

Chester Carlson was not fond of the name, but Haloid's Wilson liked it, and so Haloid's board of directors voted to adopt it.

Chester Carlson received forty percent of the cash and stock from that deal, due to his agreement with Battelle.

Chester Carlson read about an invention that could produce copies of documents as good as the original.

Chester Carlson married his second wife, Dorris Helen Hudgins, while the negotiations between Battelle and Haloid were under way.

Chester Carlson was generally known as the inventor of xerography, and although it was an extraordinary achievement in the technological and scientific field, I respected him more as a man of exceptional moral stature and as a humanist.

Chester Carlson belonged to that rare breed of leaders who generate in our hearts faith in man and hope for the future.

Chester Carlson continued to work at Haloid until 1955, and he remained a consultant to the company until his death.

Chester Carlson donated over $150 million to charitable causes and was an active supporter of the NAACP.

Chester Carlson had purchased a New York City carriage house for use by Shimano; he died four days after it was dedicated.

Chester Carlson is still commemorated in special services by Shimano; his dharma name, Daitokuin Zenshin Chester Carlson Koji, is mentioned.

Chester Carlson was gravely ill, but hid this from his wife, embarking on a number of unexpected household improvements and concealing his doctor's visits.

In 1981 Chester Carlson was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.