carlson,_chester_(photographs)

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Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, Rush Rhees Library Second Floor, Room 225 Rochester, NY 14627-0055 [email protected] URL: https://www.library.rochester.edu/spaces/rbscp carlson,_chester_(photographs)

Table of Contents

Summary Information ...... 3 Biographical/Historical note ...... 3 Scope and Contents note ...... 4 Administrative Information ...... 5 Controlled Access Headings ...... 5 Collection Inventory ...... 6 Series I: Chester Carlson's childhood, friends, and family ...... 6 Series II: Dorris Carlson's childhood, friends, and family ...... 9 Series III: Chester and Dorris Carlson family life ...... 11 Series IV: Portraits of Chester and Dorris Carlson ...... 12 Series V: Spirituality ...... 14 Series VI: Chester Carlson and ...... 15 Series VII: Chester Carlson's business awards ...... 16 Series VIII: Newspaper and journal articles on Carlson ...... 16

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Summary Information

Repository: Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester Creator: Carlson, Chester Floyd, 1906-1968 Title: Chester Carlson photographs ID: D.314 Date [inclusive]: 1906-1998 Physical Description: 11 boxes Physical Description: 4 scrapbooks Physical Description: 1 folder Oversize Language of the English Material:

Preferred Citation

[Item title, item date], Chester Carlson Photographs, D.314, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester

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Biographical/Historical note

Chester Carlson, inventor of xerography was born in 1906. His family moved to Seattle, , Mexico and Arizona during his childhood At times the Carlson family lived in desert huts and mountain cabins. Because his father was nearly an invalid, Chester Carlson supported the family, mostly through odd jobs and manual labor.

When he was 17, his mother died, leaving him the sole breadwinner. The family at one time lived in a former chicken coop with a concrete floor. Chester slept in an alley, in a sleeping bed he made. "It looked very doubtful if I could ever go to college," Carlson had once said. "Invention was the one chance to start with nothing and end up with a fortune."

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Carlson earned a spot in Caltech, graduating amid the Great Depression with a pocket notebook of 400 invention ideas such as a raincoat with gutters, a see-through toothpaste tube, and a better bottle cap. Eventually he took a job in City patent office.

He studied in the public library, where he was amazed by the amount of labor exerted to hand copy documents. Carlson saw the need for a quick copier. Then in 1937, he discovered photoconductivity, a property in which a material changes electrical characteristics under light. By projecting an image on a photoconductive drum, he could change the static charge on only the black spaces that formed text or images. He would then dust the drum with a dark material and static would hold the dust in place until Carlson could transfer the dust to paper and fuse it into place making a copy. Carlson spent nearly ten years trying to sell his idea to many companies, but was rejected everywhere. Eventually a small photo supply company, Haloid Co. in Rochester, NY bought the idea and developed his invention. Haloid flourished with the new invention, changing its name to , a term playing on the Greek words for "dry" and "writing."

Chester Carlson married Dorris Hudgins in January 1946. He