Copies in Seconds: How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg--Chester Carlson and the

Copies in Seconds: How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg--Chester Carlson and the

A history of the photocopier offers a portrait of reserved physics graduate Chester Carlson, who invented the copier to ease his job as a patent clerk and who saw his marketing efforts daunted by numerous rejections, before the head of Xerox research recognized the machine's potential. 50,000 first printing. This history of the Xerox copier starts with its inventor, a Caltech graduate named Chester Carlson, who in 1938 made the first xerographic reproduction—a piece of waxed paper that read "10-22-38 Astoria." Xerography was difficult to perfect, requiring a coordinated ballet of paper-handling and electric charge, and it was more than twenty years before the first commercial copier, Model 914, went into production. An ungainly machine, it imparted electric shocks and used rabbit fur as a key part, but it solved a centuries-old problem—making document reproduction possible without a roomful of monks or a collection of foul-smelling chemicals. One-touch copying (and its evil twin, the paper jam) was born. Owen has a knack for explaining technical innovations in layman's terms, and he vividly conveys the magnitude of Xerox's coup: in 1961, when a television ad showed a young girl making copies, a competitor demanded proof that she was not a midget. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker The next time the copier jams, fill the downtime with Owen's interesting, informative history of the contraption and its inventor. He was Chester Carlson (1906-68), whose boyhood of depressing destitution was brightened by science teachers who took seriously his dream to invent something marvelous. In the late 1930s, Carlson worked by day as a patent lawyer and by night and weekends on the problem of duplicating documents, the historical lineage of which, from scriptorium to mimeograph machine, opens Owen's work. The narrative then cascades from Carlson's light-bulb moment when he read a technical article on light's electrical effect on certain metals to his and an associate's fabrication in 1938 of a rudimentary process of xerography (from the Greek for "dry writing"). Owen then recounts Carlson's course through the next gauntlet every inventor faces: convincing a business to develop his gadget, in this instance, a two-decade-long ordeal that culminated in the Xerox Corporation. While sensitively portraying Carlson's self-effacing personality, Owen entertainingly presents the surprising story behind an indispensable technology. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved David Owen plays in a weekly foursome, takes mulligans off the first tee, practices intermittently at best, wore a copper wristband because Steve Ballesteros said so, and struggles for consistency even though his swing is consistent -- just mediocre. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker, a contributing editor to Golf Digest, and a frequent contributor to The Atlantic Monthly. His other books include The First National Bank of Dad, The Chosen One, The Making of the Masters, and My Usual Game. He lives in Washington, Connecticut. Used Book in Good Condition