People call it a copier. Who invented Xerox - When was it invented? History of copiers

The man to whom office workers and others owe the creation of the copy machine was named Chester Carlson. His father worked as a hairdresser almost all his life, but due to the discovery of tuberculosis he was forced to leave his job. It soon became clear that the mother was also sick.

Very difficult times have come for the Carlson family. At the age of 14, Chester left school and got his first job in his life. At the age of 17, Chester lost his mother and was left alone with his seriously ill father, at whose insistence he entered the California Institute of Technology to study physics. To pay for his studies and feed his family, the young man worked in three different places. At the age of 24, just during his final exams, Chester Carlson lost his father.

The Great Depression, which struck a few years later, deprived young Mr. Carlson of even the job he had. We must pay tribute to the persistence of the future millionaire: he did not give up, but continued to send out his resumes and go to interviews, even when refusals fell one after another.

According to his biographers, Chester Carlson got a job as an application photographer in the patent office after 82 or 83 rejections elsewhere. There was a lot of work in the bureau, despite the economic crisis, but the speed of completion left much to be desired: Chester sometimes stayed at work until three o’clock in the morning.

The young man wanted to optimize the production process at least a little and he decided to make it so that he could copy the application without using photography. He was 28 years old.

Invention of the copier

I had to work at home to create the miracle device. The first xerographic process carried out by Carlson was carried out on October 22, 1938 and “from the inside” looked like this: on a glass sheet Carlson wrote in ink the date and place of the experiment: 10-22-38 Astoria. Astoria is the big name of the large barn where the experiment was carried out.

Then he rubbed the sulfur-coated metal plate with all his might with a cotton cloth until it became electrified. Then he placed this plate under the glass with the inscription and turned on a bright lamp.

Under the influence of light, an electric charge “drains” from those areas of the plate that are not covered by letters. Then the inventor sprinkled the plate with lycopodium (a powder made from moss moss spores), blew off the excess, and pressed waxed paper onto the plate.

This is how the first photocopy was obtained. In modern copy machines, exactly the same processes occur. Only lycopodium was replaced with toner, which a bright lamp “welds” to the surface of the paper.

Photocopy distribution

Having made sure that the copying method was quite feasible, Chester went to large companies, offering his invention. His working tool did not make the right impression on potential consumers, and at first no one was particularly interested in the new device.

The Haloid company from Rochester, which produced photographic film in those years, became interested in the production of copying machines. The company was not doing well and needed to find a new product. Therefore, management reviewed all reports of inventions and patents.

In April 1945, they came across a note about Carlson’s achievements. The president of the company, Joe Wilson, came to the institute and repeated all the experiments himself, after which he decided to invest money in this business. They launched an active marketing campaign, the results of which were not particularly positive. Potential consumers asked questions about the cost of the device, its performance and the size of the new miracle technology.

Despite the difficulties that arose, Haloid acted as an investor in the project. They began to fine-tune the xerographic machine. The next difficulty was finding employees: technical graduates preferred to work on radars and missiles.

The management decided to use a trick: next to the laboratory where work was being done on improving the copier, a space research laboratory was opened, where young specialists flocked. Of course they looked into the photocopying laboratory. Many interested people stayed to work there.

Chester Carlson's invention received recognition only in 1948, exactly 10 years after its “birth.” This happened thanks to the intervention of Philip Rogers Mallory, founder of the Duracell battery manufacturing company.

By 1950, the first serial device was assembled. To get one copy, you had to perform 12 different manipulations with this wooden box. For offices, such a machine was too slow, but the machine found another use: its low cost (37 cents per photocopy form) and the ability to relatively quickly make copies interested book publishers.

Now, to prepare the printing form, there was no need to melt the type to get the first print - it could be a photocopy. Now a book of 200 pages could be printed in just six months.

Another 10 years later, the very same model of the copying machine that Carlson dreamed of creating was born and put into mass production: put down a page, pressed a button, and a copy came out.

Copier operation diagram

In general terms, the copying process can be described as follows:

• information is read from the original,
• information about the original is transferred to the copy in the form of giving a different
• electrostatic charge on the surface of the copy sheet,
• the toner is distributed on the copy sheet according to the distribution of charges,
• The copy image is fixed with a high-temperature roller.

To read information, a combination of a cold-glow halogen lamp and a sensor is used. Depending on the size of the device, either the cover of the device with the original moves, but the lamp is motionless, or the lamp moves, but the original remains motionless.

The operation diagram of the copier is presented in the diagram on the right and consists of the following main stages:

1. Charger,
2. Exhibition,
3. Manifestation,
4. Image transfer,
5. Paper separation,
6. Drum cleaning,
7. Discharge.

And finally, a couple of interesting facts from the history of this wonderful office equipment:

In the first copying machines, the ink did not adhere well to the page; it had to be heated very much. That's why the first copiers caught fire from time to time. From 1950 to 1960 they were produced with a built-in fire extinguisher.

The general manager of the Xerox company decided to present the device to representatives of various trade organizations. He gathered them for a conference and said: “The guys have finally made such a device that even I can work.” Then he took a page of some document, put it where it should be and pressed a button. A completely white sheet crawled out of the car.

The manager just mixed it up and put the sheet with the white side down. The head of the public relations service was the first to understand this. He immediately ran to the machine and turned the page. A wonderful copy came out. The manager shook for a long time and repeated: “You can’t overload managers with engineering tasks.”

On April 8, 1906, The Haloid Photographic Company was born, a manufacturer of photographic paper from Rochester (USA, New York), which became one of the largest IT corporations on the planet. After 109 years of activity, dozens of crises, more than 58,000 patents and several renamings, Xerox Corporation is still included in the ratings of the most successful companies in the world.

It was on the first Xerox Alto work-personal computer, which never left the company’s laboratories, that Steve Jobs first saw a graphical interface and the WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) principle, a computer mouse, raster graphics and work in a local network of several computers. Alto was the first to use the object-oriented programming language Smalltalk. Perhaps the entire computer and printing industry owes its emergence and development to Xerox Corporation.

This is the story of one of the most innovative companies of the twentieth century, the name of which has become a household name. But, as often happens, it all started with decades of failure.

Chester Carlson

In the 1930s, the Great Depression began throughout the world, leading to hundreds of thousands of layoffs, and Chester Carlson, a physicist from California who received a bachelor's degree in physics in 1930, became a victim of this. After leaving the institute, he began looking for his first job, but 82 companies turned him down due to huge problems of their own - a crisis, after all.

The last hope was a vacancy as a research engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, a subsidiary of Alcatel and AT&T in New York. Chester worked there for a year, and then got a job as an assistant to a patent lawyer and took up copyright cases. Here he first encountered the problem of copying a huge number of documents. The technology of that time was endlessly dull and required a lot of time and effort. Basically, documents were duplicated using carbon copies, since other methods were much more expensive.

This work pushed him to find a new and better way to copy. While still an engineer at Bell Labs, he began jotting down ideas for inventions in his notebook - a useful habit that may have determined his fate. His early experiments, which took place in his own kitchen, were based on the entries in his notebook, of which by that time there were more than 400. The experiments were not safe - explosions, smoke and stench became frequent occurrences in the house. In one experiment, Chester observed the reaction of crystalline sulfur and a zinc plate heated over the flame of a kitchen stove, which resulted in the burning of sulfur and a terrible stench throughout the entire building.

Understanding the importance of a patent, Carlson documented every step of his research and filed provisional patent applications. In 1938, his wife insisted that the experiments should take place elsewhere, and the villainous physicist rented the second floor of his mother-in-law's house. Together with his assistant, the unemployed Austrian physicist Otto Korney, Carlson continued his experiments.

Chester knew that large companies were also looking for new solutions to copying, but they were moving in a different direction. The Haloid Company owned the Photostat, an Eastman Kodak copier that specialized in copying drawings and photographs. In addition, all solutions of those years required special chemicals and paper.

Electrophotography and 9 years of wandering

On October 22, 1938, the first print obtained by electrophotography was printed. A simplified operating principle of the device: the photodrum is charged using a corotron; With the help of a lamp and a system of mirrors, exposure occurs, as a result of which the photodrum loses its dielectric properties where the light fell. Toner with ink having an opposite charge passes in front of the image drum, causing the ink to be attracted to the charged areas of the drum. A sheet of paper is rolled, the ink is fixed on it using heat treatment, and the toner drum is cleaned.

For 6 years, Carlson tried to prove to businessmen that his invention was urgently needed in the world, but in response he received only comments about the imperfection of the product - huge sizes, constantly dirty sheets and low speed of work. He was rejected by more than twenty organizations, including IBM and the US Navy, which needed dry printing, because they did not see anything innovative in the technology.

In 1944, when Carlson was close to abandoning his idea, a young engineer from the Battelle Memorial Institute, Russell Dayton, appeared at his agency, called as an expert to appeal another case. He struck Chester as someone who was “interested in innovation.” And although Russell had never helped inventors before, he really liked the idea of ​​electrophotography.

They went to Columbus, where they showed the invention to the engineers and scientists of the institute. Carlson said:

It may look like a raw product. But this is the first time you have seen a reproduction of something obtained without a single chemical reaction and using a dry method.

Bastelle took up the physicist's idea, although the work seemed strange to them. It was not based on any scientific work, the principles were not formulated and generalized - they were just sketches, ideas and a series of phenomena, as a result of which a copy appeared. However, only the result mattered. And the fact that Carlson did everything without special instruments and outside of a “favorable scientific atmosphere” aroused respect, because many scientists were also engaged in research in this direction.

In the fall of 1945, Battelle agreed to act as Carlson's guarantor for his patents, pay for further research, and develop the idea. Battelle tried to get major printing and photography companies like Eastman Kodak and Harris-Seybold interested in licensing the idea, but to no avail.

The Haloid Photographic Company

On April 18, 1906, the factory of a new company engaged in the production and sale of photographic paper opened its doors for the first time in Rochester. Entrepreneur M.H. Kuch took an interest in the developing niche of photographic technology, as it was during the period from 1902 to 1907 that rapid developments in the field of color photography took place. Over the next 32 years (!), the company grew moderately along with its market, only expanding its products with photographic equipment and accessories.

In the fifties, Haloid began to look for ways to develop, as they were completely eclipsed by neighboring Eastman Kodak, which presented great problems for the business. John Dessauer, head of the research department, read about Carlson's invention in the newspaper and saw it as a new niche in which they could beat Kodak.

In 1946, Bastelle and The Haloid Phorographic Company entered into a deal providing for Haliod's rights to use electrophotography. The institute continued to develop the technology - reducing the size and inaccuracy of printing, and the company began producing a commercial product.

In 1948, the head of Haloid, Joseph Wilson, convinced the US Army Signal Corps - a state corporation that provides absolutely everything to the US Army - to begin funding the production and research of dry printing technology. The state feared a nuclear war, which could destroy all modern photo, X-ray and copying devices. Radiation greatly affected both the film and the chemical reactions of older copying methods. As a result, half of Haloid's revenue this decade came from government contracts.

At the same time, a professor of philology from Bastelle notes that the term “electrophotography” is dissonant and suggests “xerography” (zirography, from the Greek ξηρός “dry” and γράφω “writing”). Carlson doesn't really like this idea, but Haloid approves, accepts and begins to promote the term.

After ten years of work, Bastelle slowed down the development of technology and renegotiated the contract, giving almost all rights to use Haloid. Carlson and his family move to Rochester, becoming a consultant for the company.

Xerox. Start

Development of the first commercial product continues, and testing of the first fully automatic photocopier of acceptable dimensions begins. During five years of development, it was possible to reduce the size of the prototypes by more than half and significantly increase the speed characteristics of the models. So, in 1949, the Xerox Model A was born.

It was a very compact copier with a very difficult process to use. It took 39 steps to obtain the seal, mostly by hand. Model A was not a very successful product, but it showed the industry's readiness to produce the required type of paper at the required scale.

In 1958, the board of directors agrees to CEO Wilson's old idea of ​​renaming the company. From now on, the company was called Haloid Xerox, which declared its priorities.

Xerox 914

The most important product of the company in its entire history. The large size relative to the Model A was offset by the advantages of a fully automated copying process and profitable distribution schemes - the machine could be rented for $25 a month. Together with the purchase of paper, it came out to less than $50 a month, which was an excellent solution for any business.

Interestingly, during the first demonstration of the product, one of the two copiers caught fire, completely burning out, while the second one did the job perfectly. But even this presentation did not affect the sales of the device. After the release of Xerox 914, the company's profits doubled. This prompted another name change, now to Xerox Corporation.

Fortune magazine called the 36-kilogram machine "perhaps the most profitable product ever made in the United States." You know the rest - by 1968, the company's sales exceeded $1 billion.

Jack Trout, marketer

For Chester Carlson, the Xerox 914 became the “crown of creation” - it was exactly the device that he always dreamed of creating. After the release of this model, Carlson’s participation in the life of the company became less and less and he became involved in charity work.

Xerox began working on the creation of laser printers in 1969. Success in this direction was achieved in 1978 by company employee Gary Starkweather, who was able to add a laser beam to the operating technology of existing Xerox copiers, thus creating the first laser printer. The full-duplex Xerox 9700 could print 120 pages per minute (by the way, it is still the fastest laser printer in the world). But the high price—$350,000—and enormous size put an end to successful sales.

Xerox PARC and Apple

The 70s almost became the last in the company's history. In 1970, a new direction for the company’s development was chosen, announced at a meeting of shareholders:

“Xerox and IBM are two large companies specializing exclusively in information technology. IBM has the means of data processing in its hands, and in our hands the technology for transferring it to paper. But the boundaries between them are blurring: distinguishing one from the other is becoming more and more difficult. As early as the 1970s, we should have been able to tell any major customer: “We can meet all your information needs. Including data processing.”

Peter McCollough - CEO of Xerox Corporation in 1970

The company decided to engage in other industries - information technology and innovation. This is how Xerox PARC - Palo Alto Research Center was founded. One of the most important IT organizations in history. The company began a big battle on the IBM field, not knowing that they would be defeated on their own.

By underestimating Japanese manufacturers, Xerox lost 86% of the US copier market after being a monopoly several years ago. Canon's cheaper and simpler technology was aimed at small businesses and home systems, and was able to conquer almost the entire market in less than a decade.

However, the course was chosen, and in 1973, the Xerox Alto, a computer that played the most important role in the history of personal computers, was assembled in the PARC laboratories. This role was to catch the eye of Steve Jobs.

This happened against all odds. Jeff Raskin, a computer interface specialist, was convinced that the Xerox Alto graphical interface was the future of computers.

“Raskin persuaded Jobs and his colleagues from Apple to go to Xerox PARC to look at the Alto. But it wasn't that easy. Jobs considered Raskin a boring theorist and called him a “fucking dumbass.” Raskin had to attract to his side his student Bill Atkinson, who, according to Jobs’ classification, fell into the category of “geniuses”; This was the only way to get Steve interested in Xerox PARC projects.

Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs: A Biography

24-year-old Steve Jobs, when he first saw Xerox innovations, as he himself says, “was blind.” However, realizing the potential of the inventions, Apple bought the rights to use everything they saw in the PARC laboratories, in return giving Xerox the opportunity to buy back part of Apple's shares before its IPO. In this case, if Xerox's internal inventions are successful, they will be able to make money from it. And so it happened, the shares purchased for $1,000,000 were already worth $17,600,000 by the time the company went public. An entire chapter in Jobs’ biography is devoted to Apple’s meetings with Xerox PARC.

Jobs himself said that Xerox could become a market monopoly because they owned the most advanced solutions, both software and hardware. But because the engineers had no vision for the final product, the company lost this opportunity forever.

Having received what they wanted, the Apple team began improving the prototypes. The three-button mouse and software for it were considered inconvenient, and Jobs demanded that it be completely changed - the control should have been based on one button, the cursor should have moved more smoothly, for which it was necessary to use the “wheel”. As often happened, the development manager was fired and replaced for remarking that this was impossible. The people working on the display said the same thing - they needed to make it white and the font black, which was important for implementing the “WYSIWYG” principle - what you see is what you get. However, the task was completed.

The graphic part has also been greatly changed. The requirements were maximum fluidity and the ability to work with several programs at once - the concept of “windows”, called “areas” by the company. Displaying a raster image on the screen itself was a very resource-intensive task - all computers then had luminescent dark green lines on the screen. I pressed the button and a symbol appeared. In a pixelated monitor, each pixel must be processed by the system. Therefore, Apple engineers faced very difficult tasks.

Three years later, Xerox management realized that something needed to be done in this direction, and development continued. Apple tensed. In 1981, the Xerox 8010, known as the Star, went on sale. It was designed for the corporate segment - the cost of the computer itself was $16,000, and the workstation with all the additional equipment added another $75,000 to the price tag.

Jobs believed that Xerox had a chance, but they ruined it, which made it clear that they did not pose a threat.

IBM and informatization

Following the path of enslaving the sphere of information, the company tried to create information networks. First, within a room - several machines, which are one workstation, later within an office, for a local network and servers. The final stage was to be a huge telecommunications system in America, and later around the world, connecting hundreds of offices of different corporations.

The basis for the Xerox Telecommunications Network was to be Western Union, which was immediately purchased. After three years of development, the idea was recognized as a mistake, and everything purchased was sold at huge losses. Perhaps this was another mistake by Xerox, because over 10 years of development such a network could have transformed into something similar to the modern Internet.

It is noteworthy that the company tried not so much to engage in new areas as to stop being associated only with printers and office supplies. So says famous marketer Jack Trout in his book “Big Brands, Big Problems.” He is very skeptical about the company's activities after the 1970s, believing that Xerox each time did exactly what it should not have done at that moment. This concerned both the company’s enormous resources invested in promoting the idea “Xerox is more than printing” and the principles of economic policy. Trout believes that if the company could remain a leader in its field, they would become the IBM of the printing world.

We don't know how much computer development would have slowed down if IBM hadn't had so many competitors, most notably Apple, in the 1970s. However, we can definitely say that Xerox played a key role in this.

Late twentieth century, present day

After the release of Memorywriter, an electronic typewriter, the company made several more attempts to change the image of itself. Purchases of insurance companies, provision of analytical services, organization of charitable foundations - nothing has influenced public opinion.

The company remained Xerox (“Zirox”). The same company that makes printers and office equipment. However, this does not prevent it from remaining a successful corporation today, with an incredible past. And who knows, maybe the biggest discoveries await Xerox in the future.

Copying and duplicating documents, of course, arose simultaneously with the documents themselves. But in general, people began making copies much earlier, perhaps at the moment when an ancient artist wanted to depict on the wall of a cave exactly the same mammoth as in his neighbor’s home. And since no technical means for this yet existed, one had to rely only on one’s memory and eye, which could not but affect the identity of the copy.

Thousands of years later, engraving and printing technologies were invented, which made it possible to obtain a new text or drawing in the required number of copies, but it was still necessary to copy an existing document manually: cut out the engraving matrix from the sample, type the text and make an impression of it, or even redraw it in the old fashioned way or rewrite. It was possible to copy the original by placing transparent paper on it, or use a pinhole camera, but this did not solve the problem.

In 1714, the Englishman Henry Mill invented a writing machine that made it faster and easier to write down, copy and reproduce printed text. Unfortunately, the machine only made one copy of a document, and it was not until 1806 that Pellegrino Turri invented carbon paper, making it possible to produce up to five copies at a time.

Hectograph.

In addition, using a typewriter, it was possible to make wax stencils for the mimeograph (rotator) invented by Thomas Edison, which produced a significant number of copies. Another duplicating device was the hectograph proposed by the Russian engineer Mikhail Alisov; it produced up to 100 copies from a gelatin matrix.

And yet, strictly speaking, all these devices were not yet copying in the literal sense of the word. With their help, it was possible to make a typesetting or an intermediate print, and then get several identical copies of the document, but, for example, they could not make a copy of a book page. In other words, it was not a facsimile (providing an exact copy), but a printing reproduction of the original document. To achieve true copying, it was necessary to invent something like photography on paper. Such devices, using chemical developers, infrared radiation and special paper, appeared in the mid-20th century, but the copying process, which has become common in recent decades, relies on physical phenomena, in particular the photoconductivity of semiconductors.

In 1934, the American physicist Chester Carlson, who had experience working in the patent office and knew the value of good copies of documents, began his research related to photographic and printing processes. His attention was drawn to a publication that the electrical conductivity of certain materials changes when exposed to light. He decided to base his development on this principle.

In his laboratory in the back room of the Astoria Hotel on Long Island, Carlson performed an interesting experiment. Having electrified a plate of polycrystalline sulfur by friction, he illuminated it through the film carrying the image. Sulfur is a photoconductor; when illuminated, current carriers appear in it, which discharge the illuminated areas. Therefore, after light exposure, a latent image appears on the surface of the sulfur, formed by charged and discharged areas. If you dust such a surface with a powder with an opposite charge, grains of the powder will be attracted to the corresponding areas, and the image will appear. To demonstrate this, Carlson used the triboelectric effect, which has long been known in physics. He mixed red lead and sulfur powders, the particles of which, when in contact with each other, are charged with opposite charges, and pollinated a plate of sulfur. Particles of red lead showed a latent image. The words appeared on the surface of the record: “Astoria, October 22, 1938.” This date can be considered the birthday of xerography.

C. Carlson.

The first xerographic print.

In 1942, Carlson patented his invention, which he called electrophotography, and began introducing it into production. He demonstrated a prototype to representatives of various companies, proving that a copy machine was necessary for successful business, but he received refusals everywhere. They were motivated by the fact that the device is very bulky and, moreover, during the copying process it heavily contaminates sheets of paper. Only two years later the inventor managed to sell a license for further development and production of copiers to the Haloid Company.

The name “electrophotography” seemed too “scientific” to buyers, and a philologist professor was brought in to collaborate, who found a more commercially acceptable name “xerography”, from the Greek words xeros “dry” and grapho “writing.” Carlson shortened this name to the familiar “copier”. In 1948, copiers appeared on the market, the first model was simply called Model A.

The principle of operation of the copier was as follows. Before printing, the photodrum was charged with a corona electric discharge, after which exposure was carried out using a lamp and a system of mirrors. The drum coating in illuminated areas lost its dielectric properties, which led to the flow of electric charge onto the ground in these places. Then the coloring matter (toner) from the development roller was transferred to the discharged areas due to its opposite charge. A sheet of paper was rolled along a drum and entered a fuser, where the toner was melted and pressed into the sheet structure.

A copy of Charles Carlson's first copy machine.

One of the first Xerox Model D models.

In the same 1948, the German inventor Eisben, independently of Carlson, created his own copying machine, using the same principle, but slightly different in terms of design. The company founded by Eisben, Develop Corp., which owns 16 patents for duplicating equipment, still produces copiers. After some time, other American and European companies began to produce copying equipment.

In 1953, a graduate of Moscow University, Vladimir Fridkin, based on the research of the Bulgarian physicist Georgiy Nadzhakov, created a copying machine using a slightly different principle. Nadzhakov discovered that when some photoconductors are illuminated by an external electric field, internal electric polarization appears in them and persists for a long time. Such a photoconductor with constant electric polarization was called a photoelectret. In Friedkin's apparatus, the photoelectret served as a photosensitive layer, and development was carried out using the triboelectric effect as in Carlson. However, the photoelectret not only formed, but also stored the image. It could be kept hidden and could be revealed long after exposure. A prototype of the EFM-1 apparatus was manufactured at the Poligrafmash plant. An electrophotography laboratory was opened in Vilnius, and at one of the Chisinau factories they were preparing for the mass production of copying machines, but for political reasons the work was stopped: the availability of duplicating equipment to the government seemed dangerous.

Meanwhile, the Haloid Company released a fully automatic model of the Xerox 914 copier in 1959. To get a copy, you just had to load the original with ordinary (not special, like other manufacturers) paper and press a button. The new model immediately gained so much popularity that the company changed its name to Xerox Corporation. The Xerox 914 was to the copier market what the famous Ford T was to the automobile market.

Xerox Corporation building.

The company not only sold its rather expensive devices, but also rented them out, thereby further strengthening its position. She later developed and marketed the first fax machine, the forerunner of the modern fax machine. In 1966, a model was produced whose dimensions were six times smaller than those of the Xerox 914; it easily fit on a desk. By the end of the 1960s, the company's trade turnover exceeded a billion dollars.

In 1968, Xerox copiers appeared in the USSR, and in 1974, a representative office of the company was opened in Moscow. In Russian, the name of the trademark has become a common noun to designate any copying equipment, although only foreign-made: the domestic copiers “ERA” and “REM” that appeared at about the same time were not called copiers. It is curious that in Mongolia, where Canon was the first to supply copiers, copiers are called “canons”.

As part of the fight against monopolization, the US Federal Trade Commission in the 1970s ordered Xerox to provide free of charge the basic patents for Carlson's invention to all companies interested in it. As a result, Japanese companies Ricoh, Canon and Sharp quickly filled the American and European markets with their high-quality and cheaper products. To its credit, Xerox has dealt with increased competition and continues to be a leader in the copier industry.

Employee of the Russian State Library named after. V.I. Lenin at the copy machine. 1974

Color Xerox 6500. 1973

The improvement of copiers continues at full speed. In recent decades, digital laser copiers have appeared. The laser beam applies dark areas of the image to the photodrum, while the toner “sticks” only to the uncharged areas of the drum, and is repelled from the rest of the surface by the same electric charge. And although in the future the use of paper documents will inevitably decrease due to the transition to electronic media, until then copiers still have a lot of work to do.

High-speed copying machine Konica.

According to the latest estimate from consulting firm Infotrends, more than 3 trillion copies and prints have been made using Xerox Corporation copiers worldwide. The company has representative offices in 130 countries, about 55 thousand employees and more than 5 million customers. Xerox's annual turnover exceeded $15 billion.

Since Stalin’s times, or more precisely since the period of the struggle against “admiration of Western technology,” the USSR has actively promoted the idea that many technical achievements were originally the fruit of the minds of our brilliant scientists and engineers, as well as the hands of our most talented self-taught people. It was the Russian “left-hander” who invented this and that before the Europeans, jumped from the bell tower of Ivan the Great, was the first to fly, etc. But there are achievements that we can rightfully be proud of. What is called a photocopier today is the invention of a Soviet physicist.

It has become firmly established in the public consciousness that photocopiers are the fruit of the design ideas of Xerox engineers. Scholars will correct such ignoramuses and tell how on October 22, 1938, the American Chester Carlson received a copy of the cover of a booklet from the Astoria Hotel in New York, where his laboratory was located. Mr. Carlson achieved this by electrifying a plate of semicrystalline sulfur by friction and illuminating it through a film carrying an image. Since sulfur is a photoconductor, the resulting current carriers discharged the illuminated areas of the plate. After this light exposure, the engineer dusted the plate with a powder containing the opposite charge, and a previously hidden image appeared on the surface. Chester Carlson was the first in the world to take what was then called dry photography.

Has anyone else not understood the catch, what does the Soviet inventor have to do with it? Let's explain: the American did it without special equipment. And even the idea itself is not the result of his brainstorming. The triboelectric effect has been known to physicists for a long time. With a slight difference in time, a similar experiment was carried out by the Bulgarian physicist Georgiy Nadzhakov, who worked at the Marie and Pierre Curie Institute in Paris. In 1944, this method was called “dry writing,” and employees of the Department of Ancient Languages ​​at Ohio State University proposed calling it xerography in Greek.

According to not very reliable information, in 1947 the rights to dry photography were allegedly bought by the Haloid company from Rochester, which specialized in the production of photographic paper. But xerography was not widely used at that time.

The idea of ​​photocopying, which Vladimir Mikhailovich Fridkin, for lack of a better word, called electrophotography, came to the mind of a young graduate of the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University when he was reading physics magazines in Leninka describing the experiments of Chester Carlson and articles by Georgiy Nadzhakov. After a series of not entirely successful experiments, in the fall of 1953, copies of documents and half-tone photographs began to be obtained.

The director of the small NIIpoligrafmash, which huddled in crumbling houses behind the Textile Institute, ordered that a model of the first electrophotographic apparatus, EFM-1, be made at the plant. The abbreviation stood for: electrophotographic duplicating machine. The number 1 meant that the experiment would be continued and the apparatus would be improved. Despite the primitive mechanics, the effect was amazing.

The research institute held an offsite meeting, which was attended personally by the Minister of Communications Industry. As a result, the Institute of Electrography was created in Vilnius, which was immediately classified. In the capital of another fraternal republic - in Chisinau - one of the factories was repurposed for the production of EPM. And while in the West they were inventing words for a machine that did not exist there, in the USSR they were producing such a machine without calling it a copier. Whatever you name the ship, that’s how it will sail!

In 1961, the American company "Haloid" renamed itself "Xerox" and began producing the first models of copiers. They worked on a different principle than the Soviet ones. However, Friedkin's ideas seemed interesting to Chester Carlson. In June 1965, the American visited his colleague. Chester and Vladimir took a souvenir photo together at the EFM.

“Erica” takes four copies, - sang in the famous song of Alexander Galich. - That's all. And that’s enough!” The “Erika” typewriter was the main tool for the distribution of Samizdat by dissidents in the 1970-1980s. Using the “handwriting” of the typewriter, law enforcement agencies could easily determine the place where seditious literature was printed. Western-made photocopiers were very rare and were found only in special important institutions, specially guarded rooms were equipped for them, and each copy made was recorded in a special registration journal. There were no prospects for the industrial development of copying equipment in the USSR.

In his autobiographical story “A Lifelong Street,” Vladimir Fridkin recalled that “I was not surprised when there was a knock on the room, and the lady from the first department of the institute very politely explained that I had to hand over my device for write-off.

— For what write-off? - I asked. — You know, this is the very first photocopier in the world!

“I know,” the lady answered. “But you have no right to keep him in your room.” In your absence, strangers may come here..."

The dismantled device was taken to a landfill. As a mirror in the women's toilet, they nailed the only surviving part from the first of all photocopiers - a mirror plate of a photoelectret. For many years, employees of the research institute put themselves in order by peering into the remains of a Soviet photocopier.

The inventor was remembered during the years of perestroika. Friedkin was invited to the USA and awarded a medal from the American Photographic Society for his significant contribution to the creation of photocopying equipment. In 2003, Vladimir Mikhailovich was awarded the International Committee on Photographic Science for his “outstanding contribution to the development of unusual (silverless) photographic processes and international cooperation in this field.” Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the creation of the first copier, the Berg Prize awarded to Friedkin indicates that the scientific world has recognized that the copier appeared not in 1938, but in 1953. In the USSR, not in the USA.

In 1906, the Haloid Company was founded in Rochester (USA), which began producing photographic paper. Several decades later (in 1947), the company's management acquired a patent for a copier previously developed by Chester Carlson. Even later, in 1958, the company was renamed Haloid Xerox, and in 1961 - Xerox Corporation. These are just some moments from the history of today's most famous manufacturer of copying equipment and peripheral devices. In reality, there was a stunning rise, then a near collapse, and finally a revival. This is all about Xerox.

Chester Carlson - inventor of the photocopier

In the 1930s, not all Americans had jobs that paid well. As for the inventor of the first copying machine, Chester Carlson, he had to start earning money at the age of twelve, combining work and study at college, and then at the Polytechnic Institute in California. Chester graduated from the educational institution with a bachelor's degree in physics.

Having worked as a janitor, cleaner, and printer's assistant, Carlson sent out several dozen resumes. The patent department of P.R. Mallory and Co. responded to one of them and hired the young guy. The task was to photocopy and distribute copies of the drawings. The clients were various companies.

Copying methods at that time were “old-fashioned”: labor losses were enormous, there were a lot of defects. It was for this reason that Chester came up with the idea of ​​using some method to mechanize his work. Thus, the closet of his small apartment became a laboratory for conducting experiments and moving towards the goal. After 3 years of intensive work, Carlson and his partner received the first copy created using the electrostatic method. Having received a patent, the inventor began to offer the product of his work to various companies.

Xerox: from first profit to millions of dollars

Demonstrations of the operation of the first copying machine were often unsuccessful: the paper was spoiled and the copies turned out blurry. This forced Carlson to look for lenders, without whom further development would be impossible. 3,000 thousand dollars were allocated by the management of the Bettel Memorial company, under whose tutelage the inventor continued to work. Bettel Memorial's partner was Haloid. Later, a joint venture was formed - Rank-Xerox.

After the formation of the new company, the main task of the inventor and the team was to improve the apparatus of the 914 model, which had a number of shortcomings. At first it even went on sale with a fire extinguisher. The reason for this was frequent paper fires. Over time, the model was eventually made more advanced, and thanks to a television commercial, it gained popularity. Since that time, these devices began to go on sale and were also rented out.

In 1966, the company sold a more advanced model 813. It was 6 times smaller than the 914. Later came the 2400. Sales grew over the years and it looked like this:

• In 1959 the volume was $32 million;
• In 1961 – 61 million;
• In 1962 – 104;
• In 1968 – 1125.

Decline in production and loss of sales market, return to leading position

Almost all of Xerox's successes were due to the lack of competition at that time. After Kodak and IBM began to strengthen their position, Xerox fell on hard times.

The near collapse of the company forced management to look for a variety of ways to solve the accumulated problems. One of these was contacting the consulting firm of Nedler, who identified the main problems and drew up a further action plan. The main points were:

• Clear and precise formulation of tasks;
• Organization of innovations;
• Transfer of production to new rails.

The implementation of new ideas was impossible without new knowledge. In order to obtain them, Xerox management turned to Phil Crosby with a request to give a series of lectures for the company's senior management on the topic of quality problems. The question also arose about complete retraining of personnel. To solve this problem, a training complex was built in Leesburg.

By the end of 1988, 100 thousand Xerox employees had undergone retraining, which gave excellent results: product quality became noticeably higher, profits began to grow. In the same year, the French, English and Dutch branches received a number of awards for high quality products.

The year 1989 is one of the most successful in the company’s history: Xerox receives the “Baldridge Prize,” which greatly strengthens its position in the market of copiers and peripheral devices.