Var India, October 22, 2013-11-07
According to a recent update, Xerox celebrated 75th anniversary of Xerography in India, created by Chester Carlson. Now is the time when many companies would look back, and we certainly will, but only for a moment. The real focus of our celebration will be the future and how Xerox will continue to simplify how work gets done. That is why the theme of our anniversary year is ‘The Next 75’, said Ursula Burns, Xerox CEO & Chairman of the Board
Rajat Jain, MD, Xerox India, said, Chester’s vision lives on. At Xerox, we are on a mission to move it forward another 75 years, bigger and better through our vision of The Next 75 targeted at employees, partners and customers and simplifying the way work gets done.
He also added, Transformation is inherent in the Xerox DNA. Xerox has always looked at the future. Be it the document revolution in the digitized world to the next big leap in document management services, Xerox has always been in the forefront of transforming document technologies and making office work a little more simple and making enterprises more productive and efficient. Our foray into Business Process & ITO services carries forward the same philosophy with an expanded services offering and today we have evolved to become the world’s leading enterprise for business process and document management.
Over the next year, Xerox employees and partners will be engaged in a series of activities celebrating and imagining the future through the company intranet, web chats and social media.
Business Insider, October 22, 2013
This Is The First Xerox Copy Ever Made
Chester Carlson revolutionized the way businesses operate with a simple invention: the xerox. He produced the world's first copy in 1938 in a small Astoria apartment in Queens, NY.
That was exactly 75 years ago.
Carlson spent his life coming up with crazy inventions, including a raincoat with gutters that guides water away from trouser legs and a toothbrush with replaceable bristles. But unlike those other inventions, his invention of xerography actually took off, and the technique became an instant success almost overnight.
How did he do it?
The idea behind xerography is all about light and electrical charges. According to Xerox.com, by placing an image on an electrical conductor and then exposing it to light, you can create a copy. The illuminated areas – the blank areas of whatever you are copying – become more conductive after exposure to the light. This makes the actual image part of whatever you are copying have a positive charge.
After a year of experimentation in the kitchen of his apartment, that included several small fires and an angry wife, Carlson was successful.
A negatively charged powder is then spread over the copy and it sticks to the positively charged images. A piece of paper is placed over the powder image, the powder is fused to the paper using heat, and you get your copy.
Carlson and his assistant, a formerly unemployed physicist named Otto Kornei, used a zinc plate coated in sulfur as an electric conductor. They rubbed the sulfur with a cotton handkerchief to generate a positive electric charge.
Kornei wrote the date and location, 10-22-38 ASTORIA on a microscope slide and then laid it on the zinc plate. After exposing the slide to a bright light, they removed the plate and dusted it with powder. A copy of the image 10-22-38 ASTORIA showed up on the plate – the world's very first xerox.
The image in the sulfur was transferred to a sheet of wax paper and heated so the powder would stick to the paper. Luckily for Carlson he also worked as a patent lawyer and actually became very wealthy from his invention. But he still lived very simply and near the end of his life he gave away most of the fortune he earned from Xerox.
You can check out one of the earliest xerox commercials from 1964 and see how some of the earliest machines worked:
Indiainfoline, October 23, 2013
Xerox celebrates 75 Years of Xerography
The copy might have been fuzzy, but it was still a copy. In fact, it was the world’s first xerographic copy.
Written in a bold hand on a glass slide was the date and location: 10-22-38 Astoria. The copy might have been fuzzy, but it was still a copy. In fact, it was the world’s first xerographic copy.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the first xerographic image, created by Chester Carlson in a rented second story room in Queens, N.Y. This humble invention would eventually lead to the formation of the Xerox Corporation and the birth of an industry. Even today, this xerographic process is still at the heart of most office printers and copiers around the world.
Trained as a physicist and lawyer, Carlson was a serial inventor. He kept notebooks full of a wide array of inventions including a rotating billboard, raincoat with gutters and a shoe cleaning machine.
In honor of his inquisitive nature and his remarkable invention, that truly changed how business has been conducted for decades, this October Xerox is kicking off a celebration of innovation and its role in the company’s history and future. Over the next year, Xerox employees and partners will be engaged in a series of activities celebrating and imagining the future through the company intranet, webchats and social media.
“Now is the time when many companies would look back, and we certainly will, but only for a moment. The real focus of our celebration will be the future and how Xerox will continue to simplify how work gets done,” said Ursula Burns, Xerox CEO and chairman of the board. “That’s why the theme of our anniversary year is ‘The Next 75.’”
Carlson’s vision at the time of his Astoria experiment was “to make office workers a little more productive and office work a little simpler and less tedious.”
Celebrating 75 years of Xerography in India, Rajat Jain, MD, Xerox India said, “Chester’s vision lives on. At Xerox, there’s inspiration and innovation around every corner, and we’re on a mission to move it forward another 75 years, bigger and better through our vision of The Next 75 targeted at employees, partners and customers and simplifying the way work gets done.”
He also added, “Transformation is inherent in the Xerox DNA. Xerox has always looked at the future. Be it the document revolution in the digitized world to the next big leap in document management services; Xerox has always been in the forefront of transforming document technologies and making office work a little more simple and making enterprises more productive and efficient. Our foray into Business Process & ITO services carries forward the same philosophy with an expanded services offering and today we have evolved to become the world’s leading enterprise for business process and document management.”
Xerox has changed greatly in size and scope since this time, but the basic principles have remained the same. From printers and copiers to transportation, education, and even healthcare the company’s team of engineers, scientists and researchers are continuing to invent in ways that make work, and life, a little simpler.