Xerography — A single idea transforms a company

The development of xerography from its earliest stages to its current acceptance in the marketplace is traced. It begins in the early 1930's with Chester Carlson's conviction that there must be a process better suited to reproducing documents than the photocopying and retyping of the day. Ten years later, the Haloid Company (forerunner of Xerox Corporation) recognized the potential of Carlson's successful use of electrostatics to form an image and arranged to develop the process. The numerous problems encountered in the development of xerography include 1) every known aspect of Carlson's invention stemmed from scientifically unexplored phenomena, 2) it was necessary to recruit and motivate creative research people and organize the problems to be solved so that they could be worked on effectively, and 3) the company management had to be continually convinced that a market existed for the product so they would continue to supply the resources needed to complete the research. A great change in approach to product development has taken place at Xerox, as evidenced by the difference between the largely empirical approach by enterprising people that resulted in the 914 machine, and the mature sophisticated task-force development of the 2400 machine series. A major reason why Xerox succeeded is that the significant people involved in the product development process were convinced that they were right and persevered until they succeeded in proving the correctness of their convictions.