Chester Carlson Xerography

Chester Carlson Xerography Chester Carlson was born in 1906 in Seattle, Washington. Chester Carlson was an American physicist and the inventor of Xerography and the so called printer/copy machine. Since Chester Carlson was born into a relatively poor family he had to financially support his family in any way he could. However, this did not stop Carlson. He worked his way through school and attended the California Institute of Technology where he earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1930. After finishing college, Carlson tried to find a job in California but he was unable to. After this he travelled to New York where he found a job at the P. R. Mallory Company which was an electrical manufacturing business. He was appointed to the patent department. This job actually helped Carlson quite a bit as he learned about patent laws and their procedures. Carlson stayed at P. R. Mallory until 1945 as the head of the patent department. Also while working at P. R. Mallory he attended law school at night and eventually got his law degree in 1939. At P. R. Mallory he

First, a rabbits fur or cotton cloth was rubbed over a metal plate that was coated with sulfur. This rubbing charged the plate with static energy. Then the charged plate was placed beneath a piece of glass where from above the material to be copied was inked. Then the metal plate and glass were exposed to a bright source of light for a couple seconds. The success of the whole process depended on if the light source lost the sulfur coatings charge. If the process this far worked than the very intense light produced emplaced an image on the material that was being copied. The image was invisible until dusting some electroscopic powder onto the metal palate which attracted the areas where the light might not of fully reached. Also to make the powdered image permanent, a piece of wax coated paper was pressed over the metal plate, and thus the copier