Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from works
Speaker 1: dot com. Pather is Welcome to tech Stuff. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and here on our show,
Speaker 1: we talk about all things technological. Sometimes we look at
Speaker 1: a specific technology. Sometimes we talk about a person who
Speaker 1: is really important in the development of tech as we
Speaker 1: know it. But today we're going to do one of
Speaker 1: the types of episodes that you guys tell me you love,
Speaker 1: and that's the history the story of a big company
Speaker 1: that's important in technology. And the one we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about is Xerox. And I know there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there who don't realize what how large
Speaker 1: a role Xerox has played in the way technology works
Speaker 1: today and the way that we interact with our technology.
Speaker 1: But the truth is it's a company that has had
Speaker 1: a huge impact on the way we interact with our technology.
Speaker 1: Now today we're gonna focus on the early years of
Speaker 1: Xeroxes development. In fact, we're going to get only up
Speaker 1: to a couple of years after they called themselves the
Speaker 1: Xerox Company for the first time. So we're focusing on
Speaker 1: the early times. But in the second part of this
Speaker 1: episode series, we will focus more on some of the
Speaker 1: R and D that Xerox did that has been so
Speaker 1: transformational to our technology today. So let's focus on some
Speaker 1: early stuff. We're really going to talk about the history
Speaker 1: of Xerox, and it may sound straightforward. You're probably thinking
Speaker 1: about copier machines, and in fact that will play a
Speaker 1: huge role in Xerox's history. But we're gonna take some
Speaker 1: time in these episodes because I'm sure it's going to
Speaker 1: require a couple to really talk about how the company
Speaker 1: has developed over time, and it's done far more than
Speaker 1: just make photocopiers and contributed in may your ways to
Speaker 1: our technology. The story stretches back more than a century. Officially,
Speaker 1: Xerox traces its history back to nineteen o six, although
Speaker 1: it was a very different company and it had a
Speaker 1: different name back in those days. And I'm already getting
Speaker 1: ahead of myself, because even if we just jumped into
Speaker 1: nineteen o six, we wouldn't have enough context to understand
Speaker 1: what is happening in the world and and the company
Speaker 1: that would become Xerox. So you know, I love my history,
Speaker 1: and as I've said on other episodes, it's really tricky
Speaker 1: to find a starting point for any given actual story, because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, life is a continuous timeline that
Speaker 1: stretches all the way back into prehistory, which is a
Speaker 1: bit grand to just talk about Xerox. If I were
Speaker 1: to say, and then man discovered fire, you would be
Speaker 1: here for many episodes, and I don't think we need
Speaker 1: to go back quite that far. So instead, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about what was going on in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century that leads towards the founding of Xerox. Now,
Speaker 1: one person who was incredibly important to those early years
Speaker 1: at Xerox never worked for the company. He was not
Speaker 1: an employee of Xerox at all. In fact, he was
Speaker 1: the man who created a company that was one of
Speaker 1: Xerox's big competitors in the early days, and that was
Speaker 1: George Eastman. He was the guy who founded Eastman Kodak.
Speaker 1: George Eastman left school when he was fourteen years old
Speaker 1: to go to work at an insurance company in Rochester,
Speaker 1: New York. And he did that because his father had
Speaker 1: passed away, and once his father had died, George Eastman
Speaker 1: felt that he needed to go and get a job
Speaker 1: in order to provide for his mother and for his
Speaker 1: two older sisters. Several years later, after he had been
Speaker 1: working for a while, Eastman became fascinated with photography, but
Speaker 1: he was really frustrated that the equipment was so bulky
Speaker 1: and awkward to use, and he began to tweak cameras.
Speaker 1: He began to take stuff apart and try and figure
Speaker 1: out ways to put it back together and make it
Speaker 1: more compact and more user friendly. And he was really
Speaker 1: working on a better solution. And among his many contributions
Speaker 1: was the development of photo finishing chemicals. And after a time,
Speaker 1: paper companies began to work on using techniques created by
Speaker 1: Eastman to cope paper for special photographic use. So Kodak
Speaker 1: was selling photographic paper, but they were doing so at
Speaker 1: a premium. Other companies began to spring up trying to
Speaker 1: sell photocopy or not photocopier, but photographic paper two customers,
Speaker 1: but at a reduced price. So you saw a lot
Speaker 1: of competition come up in those days. Kodak was doing
Speaker 1: very well. It had really made a name for itself
Speaker 1: early on as a photography company. But these other companies
Speaker 1: that were mostly paper companies were trying to cope paper
Speaker 1: so that they could be used for ato graphic purposes.
Speaker 1: They were trying very hard to try and and and
Speaker 1: compete with Codex consumer products. Now. Eastman also made significant
Speaker 1: contributions to the community of Rochester. He was very much
Speaker 1: a believer in reinvesting into his community, and that included
Speaker 1: co founding the University of Rochester with John D. Rockefeller,
Speaker 1: and Kodak was the largest employer in the area leading
Speaker 1: into the twentieth century. In two, another important person in
Speaker 1: our story enters, and that is Joseph Robert Wilson, sometimes
Speaker 1: known as Dick to his friends and family and Mr
Speaker 1: j R. Too pretty much everybody else. The reason he
Speaker 1: was called Jr. Is his father was Joseph C. Wilson,
Speaker 1: So you had to Joe Wilson's and there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a third in just a minute. Uh. And so to
Speaker 1: differentiate the two, you had Joe C. Wilson, who was
Speaker 1: a fairly important person in the Rochester community, and then
Speaker 1: Joseph Robert Wilson or j R. As a young man, Jr.
Speaker 1: Worked in his father's pawn shop in Rochester. He met
Speaker 1: a young lady named Katherine m Upton. She was the
Speaker 1: daughter of a railroad engineer, and the two of them
Speaker 1: fell in love and they got married in nineteen o three. Now,
Speaker 1: while all of that's going on, while the Wilson's family
Speaker 1: is starting to grow, one year earlier, in nineteen o two,
Speaker 1: another company was founded, and this one was called the m. H.
Speaker 1: Koon Company k u h N. This was a paper
Speaker 1: coating company. This company was founded by an immigrant to
Speaker 1: the United States, a person who was an emulsion maker.
Speaker 1: He made these mixtures, these emulsions that you would use
Speaker 1: to code paper for the purposes of turning it into
Speaker 1: photographic paper and uh. He ended up founding this company
Speaker 1: along with some former employees of Eastman Kodak, which again
Speaker 1: that company was very much the largest employer over in Rochester,
Speaker 1: New York. Now JR. Wilson was to start work at
Speaker 1: this company. He was supposed to become an employee. His
Speaker 1: father had arranged for it and made contact with the
Speaker 1: folks over it at MH. Khon and said, can my
Speaker 1: son work there? They said yes? But j. R. Wilson
Speaker 1: fell seriously ill. He he caught a disease that affected
Speaker 1: his kidneys and it laid him out. It put him
Speaker 1: out of commission for about two years he was not
Speaker 1: able to work. He was pretty seriously ill. Now he
Speaker 1: eventually recovered from that illness, but by then that struggling
Speaker 1: paper company had folded. It just couldn't couldn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: I realized I was talking about a paper company folding.
Speaker 1: And you may think that that was an intentional pun,
Speaker 1: but I assure you I didn't in it until after
Speaker 1: I had said it. So the company has gone under,
Speaker 1: and J. C. Wilson, the father Joe Joe C. Wilson,
Speaker 1: decided that j R. Would be able to help head
Speaker 1: up his own small business. So J C. Joe C.
Speaker 1: Wilson decided to put up the money necessary to start
Speaker 1: a new business and brought on the employees of MGE
Speaker 1: Coon in the process. So those folks came over from
Speaker 1: the company that was gone under and joined and they
Speaker 1: named this new company the Halloyd Corporation H A. L.
Speaker 1: O I. D. And Halloyd was in reference to some
Speaker 1: of the chemicals in this emulsion that was being used
Speaker 1: to coat the pieces of paper. This would become the
Speaker 1: company that evolves into Xerox. So this is nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: So six we get the Halloyd Corporation founding. This is
Speaker 1: the moment that Xerox traces its history back to, even
Speaker 1: though you could argue it goes back even further if
Speaker 1: you're thinking in a big picture kind of way. Now,
Speaker 1: the Halloyd Corporation's offices were on the eighth floor of
Speaker 1: the cp Ford Shoe Company on Commercial Street in Rochester,
Speaker 1: New York, and it was a loft space, so it
Speaker 1: meant that they were at the very top of this
Speaker 1: eight story building, which later on would lead J. R.
Speaker 1: Wilson to make the amazing dad joke about how Xerox
Speaker 1: started at the top. It's great, It was literally the
Speaker 1: top floor of the building, which I think is a
Speaker 1: cute story. The Halloyd Corporations product would still be this
Speaker 1: photographic paper, so it's similar to what the previous company
Speaker 1: was making. Uh, so that if you're wondering what this is,
Speaker 1: this is the paper that photographers would use to produce photographs.
Speaker 1: And the goal of the Halloid Corporation was to make
Speaker 1: photographic paper that would be at a lower cost than
Speaker 1: what Kodak could offer, and so they could then sell
Speaker 1: small all are batches of this stuff. They couldn't produce
Speaker 1: it in the same volume that Kodak could, but they
Speaker 1: could do so at lower cost to the photographers. So
Speaker 1: they were able to make a small profitable business, but
Speaker 1: it was modest. It wasn't like it wasn't doing crazy
Speaker 1: amounts of business like Kodak was, So Kodak really didn't
Speaker 1: have any concern. There was a tiny little company that
Speaker 1: didn't compete on any realistic level with Kodak at the time.
Speaker 1: The process they used to make their photographic paper was
Speaker 1: not exactly high tech. They would take this emulsion, they
Speaker 1: would take sheets of paper, they would coat the paper
Speaker 1: in the emulsion, and then they would dry the paper
Speaker 1: by blowing cold air across it. And they used a
Speaker 1: pretty primitive form of air conditioning to do it. They
Speaker 1: would get enormous blocks of ice, and they would use
Speaker 1: fans to blow air across the ice so that they
Speaker 1: could create this cool breeze to dry off the emulsion
Speaker 1: coated pieces of paper, and uh set that emulsion mixture
Speaker 1: into the paper itself. You know, you're setting it so
Speaker 1: that it actually can be used for photographic purposes. The
Speaker 1: big disadvantage to this was that there wasn't really a
Speaker 1: lot of ways to to perform quality control, so the
Speaker 1: product was largely inconsistent in those early days, there'd be
Speaker 1: some batches that be great and some batches that were
Speaker 1: not so great, and sometimes it meant that the company
Speaker 1: had to throw out a batch because it just wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't good enough to to sell to anybody. So
Speaker 1: that inconsistency was costing the money. And at that point J. R.
Speaker 1: Wilson hired an emulsion expert, someone who really knew the
Speaker 1: chemistry behind this, to help him and received some sound
Speaker 1: advice from this expert. The expert said, what they really
Speaker 1: need to do was relocate the company to a new
Speaker 1: spot where a new manufacturing plant that could be dedicated
Speaker 1: to the manufacturing of this photographic paper, and that would
Speaker 1: help them control the entire production experience from the beginning
Speaker 1: through to the end, and that would help guarantee a consistent,
Speaker 1: reliable product. And so in nineteen o seven, one year
Speaker 1: after they founded the company, the entire company prepared to
Speaker 1: move the operation to a new manufacturing plant. And by
Speaker 1: that I mean the entire company consisted of a dozen people.
Speaker 1: It was very tiny at the time. The move was
Speaker 1: going to be extremely expensive. However, even though it was
Speaker 1: a tiny company, We're talking about fifty thousand dollars needed
Speaker 1: for the move to actually happen. And that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a lot necessarily in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: but fifty thousand dollars in nineteen o seven is the
Speaker 1: equivalent of more than a million dollars in today's money,
Speaker 1: So it was a significant investment that J. R. Wilson
Speaker 1: needed in order to make this happen. He did not
Speaker 1: have fifty thousand dollars, and so there really weren't a
Speaker 1: whole lot of options open to him. Back in those days,
Speaker 1: you couldn't find venture capitalists or get really impressive loans
Speaker 1: from banks. You essentially had to find a rich Hatron
Speaker 1: type person to put forth that money. So in this case,
Speaker 1: that person was Gilbert E. Mosher. Mosher had founded a
Speaker 1: company called Century Camera, which he had sold at a
Speaker 1: tidy profit to Eastman Kodak, so he was really well
Speaker 1: off already, and he agreed that he would front the
Speaker 1: Halloyd Corporation the money they needed to move, but he
Speaker 1: had some really hefty demands of his own that they
Speaker 1: were going to have to meet for him to do this.
Speaker 1: One of those demands was that he himself would become
Speaker 1: the head of business operations and that his associate J.
Speaker 1: Milner Walmsley would have ownership control effectively of the company.
Speaker 1: That j R. Wilson would still own shares in the company,
Speaker 1: but those shares in turn would be controlled by Walmsley,
Speaker 1: which make the shares sound like they were Wilson's in
Speaker 1: name only. Mosher and Walmsley had a lot of experience
Speaker 1: running successful businesses, and Jr. Really wasn't in any position
Speaker 1: to disagree. He would later complain extensively about the two
Speaker 1: of them, uh and their management style, which was very
Speaker 1: different from his own. It was, however, a great move
Speaker 1: for the company. It was it led the Halloy In
Speaker 1: Corporation to a profitable business. Jr. Was known as being
Speaker 1: a great guide to customers. He was really outgoing and
Speaker 1: gregarious two people who were coming into to look at
Speaker 1: the products. But he had a reputation for being easily
Speaker 1: upset at his employees. He had the sort of dark
Speaker 1: moods in the office and was known to berate people
Speaker 1: if he felt that they were not doing a good
Speaker 1: enough job. And Uh, it was it was kind of tough.
Speaker 1: It sounds like to be an employee of J. R.
Speaker 1: Wilson that it was not always very pleasant and when
Speaker 1: he was happy things were great, but he could get
Speaker 1: really angry at the drop of a hat, according to
Speaker 1: some reports from his employees at the time. So again,
Speaker 1: Jared Wilson is known for complaining about his bosses mos
Speaker 1: Mosher and Walmsley, but otherwise things kept on going pretty well.
Speaker 1: His young son, j R. Wilson's young son, Joseph Chamberlain Wilson,
Speaker 1: named after his grandfather. So you had Joe C. Wilson
Speaker 1: j R. Wilson, then you have Joe Wilson. Everyone refers
Speaker 1: to this particular Joe Wilson as v. Joe Wilson. So
Speaker 1: Joseph Chamberlain Wilson he witnessed his father's behavior and took
Speaker 1: note of it and essentially said, you know what, if
Speaker 1: I'm ever in a position where I'm leading a business,
Speaker 1: i am not going to follow this particular managerial style.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna yell at my employees in this way.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be partying with them after hours
Speaker 1: and going drinking at all hours and then turning around
Speaker 1: and yelling at them. And I'm certainly not going to
Speaker 1: go home and complain about the people who made this
Speaker 1: business possible because they fronted a huge amount of money
Speaker 1: so that we could have the manufacturing facilities we need.
Speaker 1: So he was taking this all as kind of object
Speaker 1: lessons at the time. He was a very young man
Speaker 1: around this time. Now, young Joe Wilson was a good student.
Speaker 1: He enjoyed studying. He was a fairly quiet and shy
Speaker 1: young man. But he also was an honor student. He
Speaker 1: was valedictorian of his high school class, and afterward he
Speaker 1: enrolled in at the University of Rochester. Now, originally he
Speaker 1: was looking at possibly moving away and doing studies at
Speaker 1: some other university. His father, however, j R. Said Hey,
Speaker 1: if you enrolling classes at the University of Rochester, I'll
Speaker 1: give you a buick. And Joe Wilson said, I like
Speaker 1: a buick, And so he enrolled at the University of
Speaker 1: Rochester h and pursued a degree in economics. He ended
Speaker 1: up getting two buicks. Actually, um, although the second one
Speaker 1: replaced the first one. It wasn't like he was driving
Speaker 1: two of them at the same time, strapped to his
Speaker 1: feet like giant electric razors. That's silly. You don't have
Speaker 1: those scooters back at that time. And I like the
Speaker 1: thought of it. I want to see fan art of
Speaker 1: Joe Wilson astride two buicks gloriously riding off into the sunset.
Speaker 1: But I can't draw that, so I leave that up
Speaker 1: to you guys. He had really good grades at university
Speaker 1: from in every single class except for physical education. He
Speaker 1: was not a sporting kind of guy. He had he
Speaker 1: was nearsighted, and he he liked to participate in a
Speaker 1: supportive fashion in sports, like he would be a manager
Speaker 1: for a team, but he didn't like playing on teams
Speaker 1: or participating in sports. Directly after he goes undergraduate degree,
Speaker 1: he really wasn't sure what he wanted to do next.
Speaker 1: He wasn't sure where he wanted to go. And part
Speaker 1: of that was not just him being uncertain. It was
Speaker 1: because the United States at the time was entering the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, and this was an incredibly difficult time for
Speaker 1: millions of people in the United States. So he he
Speaker 1: saw that there were fewer and fewer options. There are
Speaker 1: fewer jobs that were out there, And a professor of
Speaker 1: his said, you know what you probably should do, since
Speaker 1: you don't really have an idea of where you want
Speaker 1: to go yet and things are pretty tough, you should
Speaker 1: enroll at the Harvard Business School and attend there for
Speaker 1: a couple of years and really expand your education. You'll
Speaker 1: get to see more opportunities that way, and you might
Speaker 1: end up landing something you really want. And he thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, that sounds like a good idea. And
Speaker 1: of course, worst case scenario, I can go work for
Speaker 1: my dad's company, the Halloy Corporation. So he goes and
Speaker 1: enrolls in the Harvard Business School. While he was there,
Speaker 1: twenty percent of his classmates had to drop out during
Speaker 1: their first year due to the Great Depression. They either
Speaker 1: had to leave in order to help support their families
Speaker 1: or they literally could not afford to attend anymore. And
Speaker 1: so it was a pretty hefty dropout rate when you
Speaker 1: lose a fifth of your classmates due to the economic times.
Speaker 1: But he was able to stick with it, and he
Speaker 1: graduated with honors from the Harvard Business School. And in
Speaker 1: the meantime, he also would work for the Hallowyd Corporation.
Speaker 1: He worked in their New York City office, But yeah,
Speaker 1: he ended up working there, especially in the summers, and
Speaker 1: he made twenty dollars a week as an assistant to
Speaker 1: the bookkeeping department. He would continue working for Halloyd after
Speaker 1: graduating and He also got engaged to a woman named
Speaker 1: Peggy Curran. He had actually met Peggy Curran while he
Speaker 1: was studying at the University of Rochester. She was a
Speaker 1: friend of a friend. That friend that they had in
Speaker 1: common ended up catching pneumonia and was very seriously ill
Speaker 1: for quite some time, and both Joe Wilson and Peggy
Speaker 1: Curran would check in on this mutual friend they had
Speaker 1: um and they wanted to make sure he was all right,
Speaker 1: and as a result, they met each other. They fell
Speaker 1: in love, they started dating. They had a massive, ugly breakup.
Speaker 1: Peggy ended up moving away from Rochester for a while
Speaker 1: to Buffalo, distant exotic Buffalo, New York, and Joe Wilson
Speaker 1: was despondent but figured that, you know, that was just
Speaker 1: something that runs course, until he encountered another friend of
Speaker 1: his who said, hey, where's that nice young lady you
Speaker 1: were always hanging out with? And he says, oh, well,
Speaker 1: she's moved off to Buffalo. She shuffled off to Buffalo,
Speaker 1: in fact, and the fellow said, you need to get
Speaker 1: your butt to Buffalo because she was the best thing
Speaker 1: that ever happened to you, and if you don't do it,
Speaker 1: you're an idiot, and Joe Wilson said, you know what,
Speaker 1: You're probably right. He shuffled his way off to Buffalo
Speaker 1: and he started to court Peggy Anew, who was not
Speaker 1: immediately receptive to his advances, but she eventually started listening
Speaker 1: to him more. And the story goes that at the
Speaker 1: end of one of their their meetings, she was on
Speaker 1: a train to leave and he was on the platform
Speaker 1: to see her off, and as the train pulled out,
Speaker 1: she leaned out and yelled, yes, I will marry you,
Speaker 1: which is adorable that that uh worked out that way. Well,
Speaker 1: all of this is obviously big life changing moments for
Speaker 1: Joe Wilson and Uh. He would end up marrying Peggy
Speaker 1: Current on October twelfth, nineteen thirty five. He's also still
Speaker 1: working with the Halloyd Corporation and things were actually going
Speaker 1: pretty well over at Halloyd. Unlike many other businesses during
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, Halloyd was actually making a profit. They
Speaker 1: weren't just staying in business, they were making money. They
Speaker 1: weren't blowing everything out of the water. But in a
Speaker 1: world where many people were out of a job, this
Speaker 1: was a company that was actually able to stay solvent
Speaker 1: and make a profit, which is no small shakes. Also,
Speaker 1: photography was still one of the really big developing industries.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to make that pun either, but it
Speaker 1: was a developing industry at that time. Halloyd also paid
Speaker 1: attention to some really interesting uh innovations. For example, there
Speaker 1: was a chemist named Homer Piper who created a new
Speaker 1: product called Halloyd Record in nine, which would become a
Speaker 1: very popular product, and it was this contribution that led
Speaker 1: to the company's overall success, particularly as they were waiting
Speaker 1: through the rest of the depression. This lesson really made
Speaker 1: a mark on young Joe Wilson. He saw that there
Speaker 1: was this innovation that really set Halloyd Corporation apart and
Speaker 1: helped guarantee them some success, and he said that lesson
Speaker 1: was something he would carry with him through the rest
Speaker 1: of his life. That he wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: the company that he worked for, whether it was Halloyd
Speaker 1: Corporation or someone else, would always pursue innovation, because only
Speaker 1: through innovation can you make sure that you are guaranteeing
Speaker 1: you have a spot at the industry. If you stick
Speaker 1: with the same thing and you never deviate from it,
Speaker 1: sooner or later someone else is going to do it
Speaker 1: better than you. Do, and you're gonna be out of business.
Speaker 1: So he said, the only way you could prosper would
Speaker 1: be to cultivate a company that pursued innovation in an
Speaker 1: effort to avoid stagnation. Now you might wonder what the
Speaker 1: heck is Halloyd record, but it was a type of
Speaker 1: photographic paper that was used in rectograph and photostat machines.
Speaker 1: Now that means I actually have the opportunity to tell
Speaker 1: you how about how some tech works. This is tech stuff,
Speaker 1: after all, and it is part of how stuff works.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna actually talk about how the rectograph and
Speaker 1: photo staff machines worked, and we'll get back to the
Speaker 1: story of Xerox Company once I'm done with that. Now,
Speaker 1: before I go and get all that tech stuffs out
Speaker 1: of the way, we actually do need to take a
Speaker 1: quick break first and thank our sponsors. All right. So
Speaker 1: I was talking about rectograph and photostat machines and what
Speaker 1: the heck are these things? Well, they used the process
Speaker 1: of photography to make copies. So here's how they worked.
Speaker 1: In general. Specifically, photo staff machines worked this way. You
Speaker 1: start off with a fairly large apparatus inside which you
Speaker 1: would load photographic papers such as the type that Halloid made,
Speaker 1: the Halloid record that stuff I talked about just a
Speaker 1: second ago. In fact, the Rectograph company, which got it
Speaker 1: start in the early nineteen hundreds, relocated from Oklahoma City
Speaker 1: to Rochester, New York, specifically because they relied upon the
Speaker 1: Halloid Company's photographic paper for their products. So they said, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna relocate our company to be closer to that
Speaker 1: one so that we can decrease the uh, the supply chain,
Speaker 1: which was kind of interesting that they would make that
Speaker 1: big of a move. Now, this apparatus, whether it was
Speaker 1: a rectograph or photostat, would have a large camera as
Speaker 1: its main component, and you would take a photo of documents.
Speaker 1: So you have some documents set out on a platform,
Speaker 1: you light it really well, and you take a picture
Speaker 1: of it. And a photo takes a while, Like you
Speaker 1: would have the exposure last maybe ten seconds, So think
Speaker 1: of a shutter speed on a camera lasting ten seconds.
Speaker 1: It means that you have to keep it perfectly still.
Speaker 1: Any motion is going to be seen as blur in
Speaker 1: the final image. And since you're trying to make a
Speaker 1: copy of a document and be able to read it,
Speaker 1: it meant that you had to keep things absolutely still. Uh.
Speaker 1: This image is then exposed onto rolls of photographic papers,
Speaker 1: such as that Halloyd record. There would be a prism
Speaker 1: between the lens and the paper that could reverse this image.
Speaker 1: Otherwise everything would be a hundred eighty degree mirror image
Speaker 1: of the original documentation. And then the photostat approach would
Speaker 1: differ a little bit from the rectograph with Photostat, which
Speaker 1: was largely supported by Kodak. Kodak was not officially the
Speaker 1: parent company of the Photostat company, but they might as
Speaker 1: well have been. With the Photostat, after you exposed this
Speaker 1: photographic paper to the image, you take the paper, you
Speaker 1: would treat it chemically like an old style photograph. You
Speaker 1: put it through the development chemicals to develop that image.
Speaker 1: You would end up with a negative image of the
Speaker 1: papers that you shot, so all the dark areas would
Speaker 1: be light and all the light areas would be dark.
Speaker 1: You could then photograph the this negative to create a
Speaker 1: positive print of the original documents, so you have to
Speaker 1: send it through a second round of photography. But then
Speaker 1: you could print out the original documents, and that's how
Speaker 1: you would make copies. You would photograph that negative print
Speaker 1: repeatedly and you would produce the copies you wanted. It
Speaker 1: was slow, but a lot faster than doing all of
Speaker 1: this by hand. Now, the rectograph process did not require
Speaker 1: that intermediate negative step. You could print directly from the
Speaker 1: camera onto the photographic paper, and this ended up being
Speaker 1: an enormous benefit of the rectograph compared to the photostat
Speaker 1: because of the United States court system. You see, the
Speaker 1: court system ruled that photostatic copies are inadmissible as evidence
Speaker 1: in a court of law because you could actually tamper
Speaker 1: with that intermediate negative and alter evidence. So if you
Speaker 1: could get hold of the negative that was produced from
Speaker 1: the first part of the photostatic process and change it,
Speaker 1: all the prints you make would be the product of
Speaker 1: these changed negatives. But the rectograph didn't have that intermediate negative.
Speaker 1: It was printing directly on the photographic paper and then
Speaker 1: you had your print right then and there, and for
Speaker 1: that reason it was admissible as court evidence because there
Speaker 1: was nothing for you to be able to alter. You
Speaker 1: were taking images of a document and that was what
Speaker 1: the copies would be. So the Rectograph company could survive
Speaker 1: against this much more financially solid photostatic company, even though
Speaker 1: the photostat company had the backing of Eastman Kodak. So
Speaker 1: it was a benefit just of the way the technology worked.
Speaker 1: It just happened to be that it was an advantage
Speaker 1: that photostatic didn't have, and that's how Rectograph, despite being
Speaker 1: a much smaller entity, was able to survive. And again
Speaker 1: they're working with the Halloid Corporation. This would also be
Speaker 1: a precursor or to electrostatic photo copying, which is what
Speaker 1: Xerox would build its name on. It's a completely different
Speaker 1: process and we will go through and talk about how
Speaker 1: it works later in this episode. But this kind of
Speaker 1: was the thing that gets Joe Wilson thinking about branching
Speaker 1: out from just making photographic paper, that the company needs
Speaker 1: to make something else in order to not just get
Speaker 1: knocked out of business by Eastman Kodak. So Hallowd Corporation
Speaker 1: at that point was just making paper, not the actual
Speaker 1: machines to you to create copies. And the Halloyd Record
Speaker 1: was in high demand even during the depression. That that
Speaker 1: let Halloyd Corporation stay in business and employees were able
Speaker 1: to write out the tough times and relative prosperity compared
Speaker 1: to their fellow citizens of the United States. But being
Speaker 1: in such close proximity with Eastman Kodak. I mean both
Speaker 1: companies were in Rochester, New York, which at the time
Speaker 1: was fairly small. It was kind of scary because Eastman
Speaker 1: Kodak was clearly interested in dominating that photographic paper business,
Speaker 1: so it meant that they were in the danger zone.
Speaker 1: They took the highway there. Fortunately for Halloyd, the U
Speaker 1: S Government was really cracking down on companies that were
Speaker 1: becoming monopolies. This was an era in which the government
Speaker 1: would force massive companies to break up into smaller ones
Speaker 1: if in fact they were a monopoly within their industry
Speaker 1: or within specific regions. Because monopolies are they're non competitive.
Speaker 1: There's no way for the consumer to benefit. If there's
Speaker 1: only one company that's providing the thing, they can demand
Speaker 1: whatever price they want and they're the only game in town.
Speaker 1: See also Internet service providers in the United States. Unlike
Speaker 1: certain people, I do not agree that a single ESP
Speaker 1: in a region allows for competition. Enough of that anyway.
Speaker 1: So it turns out Eastman Kodak really didn't want to
Speaker 1: push anyone else out of business either, because if they did,
Speaker 1: then the government might look at Kodak and say, you're
Speaker 1: clearly a monopoly, We're going to break up your company
Speaker 1: into smaller pieces. So in order for them to stay
Speaker 1: a solid single company, Kodak wanted to encourage competition in
Speaker 1: the space as long as that competition wasn't so great
Speaker 1: as to actually pose a threat. And the Halloyd Corporation,
Speaker 1: while it made photographic paper, which is what Eastman Kodak
Speaker 1: was making a lot of, it was too small for
Speaker 1: it to be a real threat, so Kodak wanted Halloyd
Speaker 1: Corporation to continue to exist. It benefited Kodak because it
Speaker 1: meant that they could keep on operating without the danger
Speaker 1: of being called a monopoly. And it helped that Halloyd
Speaker 1: Corporation was in Rochester the same as Eastman Kodak was,
Speaker 1: because Kodak could easily point to Hallow Corporation and say, look, clearly,
Speaker 1: we're not a monopoly. Here's a company in our hometown
Speaker 1: that does the same thing we're doing, and they're in business.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of an insurance policy for Kodak
Speaker 1: against getting broken up into smaller companies, which meant Hallowyd Corporation,
Speaker 1: while it wasn't terribly flattering to be seen as an
Speaker 1: insurance policy, was able to continue to exist and to innovate.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty five, Halloyd would purchase the Rectograph Company,
Speaker 1: that same company I was talking about earlier that had
Speaker 1: relocated from Oklahoma City to Rochester, New York in seven.
Speaker 1: By five, the companies have been working very closely together.
Speaker 1: The founder of the Rectograph Company had kind of lost
Speaker 1: interest in business. He had become obsessed with golf and
Speaker 1: just wanted to retire and become a golfer. So they
Speaker 1: started to arrange this acquisition for hallowd Company to buy
Speaker 1: the Rectograph Company and bring both of those entities under
Speaker 1: one figurative roof. The following year, nineteen thirty six, Halloyd
Speaker 1: converted into a publicly traded company and they started selling
Speaker 1: shares of the company on the stock exchange. This was
Speaker 1: in part to help pay for that acquisition. To raise
Speaker 1: the capital needed to buy the Rectograph Company, they went
Speaker 1: public and sold off shares that men a flood influx
Speaker 1: of cash came into the company and they could dedicate
Speaker 1: that to acquiring the Rectograph Company. Now. One of the
Speaker 1: employees of the Rectograph Company was initially pretty unhappy about
Speaker 1: this acquisition was a German immigrant named John desaur and
Speaker 1: he had immigrated from Germany and nineteen twenty nine, partly
Speaker 1: because his father said, you should go to America. There's
Speaker 1: lots of opportunity there. He also wanted to avoid being
Speaker 1: drafted into what would eventually become Hitler's armed forces, so
Speaker 1: he could kind of see the writing on the wall
Speaker 1: and did not want to be part of that. He
Speaker 1: moved to the United States. He was early able to
Speaker 1: speak any English. He was on the streets of New
Speaker 1: York City and it took him weeks for him to
Speaker 1: find a job, so he was practically destitute on the
Speaker 1: streets of New York trying to find work. He eventually
Speaker 1: found some work. He was able to find a German
Speaker 1: speaking employee of another company and found some work before
Speaker 1: joining the Rectograph Company. And he would become incredibly important
Speaker 1: because it was it was the sour who would see
Speaker 1: an article about a piece of technology that would become
Speaker 1: a corner stone of Halloyd Corporation and later on the
Speaker 1: Xerox Company. So it's a good thing that he decided
Speaker 1: to stick around with Halloyd Corporation. Otherwise the history of
Speaker 1: Xerox would possibly have ended sometime around nineteen forty seven
Speaker 1: forty eight, something like that now. Around the same time,
Speaker 1: there was a Los student who was creating that very
Speaker 1: technology that do Saur would learn about and then bring
Speaker 1: over to Halloy in Corporation. UH. This guy was named
Speaker 1: Chester Carlson, and Carlson had a real problem on his hands.
Speaker 1: So he was attending law school. He was studying patent law,
Speaker 1: and he had to copy lots and lots of text
Speaker 1: from various law books and it was a painstaking process.
Speaker 1: Carlson also suffered from arthritis, so it was literally painful
Speaker 1: for him to make all these copies. He had arthritis
Speaker 1: of the spine and bending over a table scratching down
Speaker 1: copies of legal text was excruciatingly painful, and he thought
Speaker 1: there has to be a better way, and he started
Speaker 1: to experiment. He started to think about ways where he
Speaker 1: might be able to make a copy of a text
Speaker 1: quickly and easily. And he later on with land a
Speaker 1: job the patent office, which meant that he had to
Speaker 1: continue making copies. So he had a real drive to
Speaker 1: figure out how to solve this problem, and he found
Speaker 1: an article in a German science journal. It was written
Speaker 1: by a guy named Paul Selennier. Selenia was interested in
Speaker 1: photo conductivity and electrostatic images at Selennier had had observed
Speaker 1: that when light touched a photo conductive surface, the electrical
Speaker 1: conductivity of that surface would increase as a result, and
Speaker 1: Carlson looked at that idea and began to experiment with
Speaker 1: chemicals and paper to see if he might find a
Speaker 1: practical application of that information. He said, well, now that
Speaker 1: we know that it does this, maybe there's something we
Speaker 1: could specifically do with that information that would allow us
Speaker 1: to make copies. So he ended up working on this.
Speaker 1: He worked out of the home for a long time
Speaker 1: of eventually his wife demanded that he opened up a
Speaker 1: a lab somewhere else. He was cooking up sulfur in
Speaker 1: his home and so his house would often smell of
Speaker 1: rotten eggs. There was one time where apparently some of
Speaker 1: the chemicals he was working on over the flame of
Speaker 1: his home stove caught fire and nearly turned into a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: Although they were able to put out the flames before
Speaker 1: any massive damage was done. His wife said, you know what,
Speaker 1: for the sake of our marriage, you're going to find
Speaker 1: a different place to do this, and so he moved out. Uh,
Speaker 1: he moved all the experiments out of their home. He
Speaker 1: opened up a small research lab and he hired on
Speaker 1: a research assistant named Otto Corne and they started working
Speaker 1: with a zinc plate. So a plate made of zinc
Speaker 1: and they coated it with sulfur. And then they decided
Speaker 1: to try and make a copy of some information that
Speaker 1: they could lay down against this zinc plate. They used
Speaker 1: a glass microscope slide as their document, and on this
Speaker 1: glass slide they use some India inc and they wrote
Speaker 1: out the following ten dash twenty two dasht a story up.
Speaker 1: They shaded down the windows, they pulled all the curtains.
Speaker 1: They made it as dark as they could. Uh. Kearney
Speaker 1: then rubbed this zinc plate with a handkerchief to help
Speaker 1: build up an electrostatic charge. So this is similar to
Speaker 1: grabbing a balloon and rubbing the balloon against say a sweater,
Speaker 1: so that you can build up an electrostatic charge, and
Speaker 1: then hold that balloon near your kid's head so that
Speaker 1: your kid's hair all stands out on end. It's fun
Speaker 1: to do just in general, your kid gets to learn
Speaker 1: science and you get to make your kid look like
Speaker 1: a crazy person. So highly recommended. So uh same effect.
Speaker 1: Though you're building up this electrostatic charge. So he's rubbing
Speaker 1: down this zinc plate coated and sulfur with a handkerchief
Speaker 1: builds up an electric electrostatic charge across the surface of
Speaker 1: the plate. They would then lay this glass slide on
Speaker 1: top of the plate. Then they exposed the whole plate
Speaker 1: to a very bright incandescent lamp. They turned off the lamp,
Speaker 1: they removed the slide, and then they would cover the
Speaker 1: plate in a sprinkling of lycopodium powder, which they then
Speaker 1: would gently blow away. So they blow the excess powder off.
Speaker 1: So you've got this zinc plate with sulfur coating it.
Speaker 1: You put the little uh you rub it down so
Speaker 1: you get the electrostatic charge built up. You put the
Speaker 1: glass microscope slide on there with the ink on it.
Speaker 1: You expose it to light, turn the light off, remove
Speaker 1: the slide, put this powder on there. Blow the powder
Speaker 1: off and low, and behold the spots where the ink
Speaker 1: had been, the dark spots the powder adhered to it.
Speaker 1: Everywhere else the the powder blue away, but in the
Speaker 1: spot where the ink was, the powder remained, so it
Speaker 1: stuck to the sections that had not been exposed to
Speaker 1: the bright light. They repeated this experiment a few times
Speaker 1: to verify the results, make sure they weren't just imagining
Speaker 1: that the area that had been covered by ink was
Speaker 1: still coated in dust. They wanted to make sure they
Speaker 1: were right. And then after a few more tries, they decided,
Speaker 1: let's see if we can transfer the print that's left
Speaker 1: behind with this dust onto something else. And they used
Speaker 1: wax sheets of paper, so she sheets of wax paper,
Speaker 1: I should say, not wax sheets of paper, sheets of
Speaker 1: wax papers. They would heat up the wax paper a
Speaker 1: little bit to melt the wax, lay it down against
Speaker 1: the plate, and that melted wax would adhere to the
Speaker 1: powder that was left behind. They lifted it up and
Speaker 1: saw that sure enough, it left a copy. It was
Speaker 1: a successful copy. And then Carlson proceeded to patent the
Speaker 1: crap out of everything because he had worked in the
Speaker 1: patent office and he knew how important patents were, so
Speaker 1: he was very wise to protect his intellectual property, and
Speaker 1: he got lots of patents about this technology. Meanwhile, back
Speaker 1: over at the Halloy Corporation in nineteen thirty eight, Mosher
Speaker 1: who had been there remember since nineteen oh seven, He
Speaker 1: was the one who fronted the money that allowed them
Speaker 1: to locate them at actual manufacturing plant. He decided he
Speaker 1: would not stand for re election as the president of
Speaker 1: the company. He was ready to retire. Now J R. Wilson,
Speaker 1: the guy who was the founder of this company and
Speaker 1: the father of Joe Wilson, would become the president. Joe
Speaker 1: Wilson became secretary treasurer. By nineteen forty Joe Wilson was
Speaker 1: elected to the company's board of directors and he had
Speaker 1: become involved in managerial meetings. He was always looking for
Speaker 1: ways that the company could continue to innovate and make
Speaker 1: itself secure while still existing within the shadow of Kodak,
Speaker 1: which again was a giant in Rochester, New York. In
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, Joe Wilson was poised to take over
Speaker 1: the company from his father, so he was going to
Speaker 1: become the next president. In fact, he was well on
Speaker 1: his way to having that happen. That's when John De
Speaker 1: Sour had transition to become the head of research over
Speaker 1: at Halloyd and in July, John de Sour read an
Speaker 1: article in the periodical Radio News that was all about
Speaker 1: this process that Carlson had created. At that point, Carlson
Speaker 1: had entered into a partnership with a nonprofit research organization
Speaker 1: called the Batel Memorial Institute, and the sour saw the potential.
Speaker 1: No Pun intended of using photo conductive processes to make copies,
Speaker 1: and Halloyd was ready to make a deal. Now. That
Speaker 1: deal would end up being fairly favorable to Battell. That
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization they held the rights to Carlson's idea, and
Speaker 1: the organization would end up receiving six of any royalties
Speaker 1: from the invention. The Battel version was a little different
Speaker 1: from Carlson's original experiments. For one thing, the organization had
Speaker 1: ditched the sulfur coated zinc plate in favor of using selenium,
Speaker 1: which is a common chemical element and much more effective
Speaker 1: than sulfur if you want to use it for this purpose.
Speaker 1: Selenium is a semiconductor, meaning there are times when it
Speaker 1: acts as a conductor of electricity in times when it
Speaker 1: acts as an insulator. That's exactly the property you want
Speaker 1: or something like this. If you're going to charge part
Speaker 1: of a surface and leave another part of the surface uncharged,
Speaker 1: it needs to be of semiconductor material. Betel It also
Speaker 1: designed a new type of powder to work with this process.
Speaker 1: It's what we would now call toner, dry particles of
Speaker 1: ink that would stick to surfaces. These days, they are
Speaker 1: small plastic particles and they uh they are attached to
Speaker 1: little carrier particles. The combination of toner and carrier particles
Speaker 1: together are called developer, So you have the developer stuff
Speaker 1: that sticks to the the elements that are used in
Speaker 1: photo copiers. On January one, Halloyd Corporation and BETTEL signed
Speaker 1: an agreement giving Halloyd the right to use this process
Speaker 1: and its products. This was despite Halloyd's relatively modest financial
Speaker 1: performance over the last several years. Bettel could have chosen
Speaker 1: to partner with somebody else, but it turns out that
Speaker 1: that organization was worried that if someone other than Halloyd
Speaker 1: Corporation took over this process, it might just sit on
Speaker 1: a shelf somewhere no one would actually do anything useful.
Speaker 1: They buy it without actually making use of it. But
Speaker 1: they were pretty confident in Halloyd Corporation was going to
Speaker 1: use this process, which is what BTEL really wanted because
Speaker 1: Hallowyd Corporation needed to do something or else it wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be competitive in the market much longer. One
Speaker 1: of the first things that the two parties agreed upon
Speaker 1: was that they needed a new name for the process.
Speaker 1: Carlson had called it electro photography, but neither Btel researchers
Speaker 1: nor Halloid employees really felt that that name worked very well.
Speaker 1: So Betel suggested a new word, zerography x E r
Speaker 1: O g r A p h y. This was a
Speaker 1: suggestion from a classical language professor over at Ohio State,
Speaker 1: and it combined two words from Greek, the word for
Speaker 1: dry and the word for writing zerography. In nine the
Speaker 1: Halloid company introduced a new product called the Xerox copier.
Speaker 1: The first mention of xerox this, by the way, was
Speaker 1: capital X e r O capital x, so you had
Speaker 1: capital x is on either side. The device was largely manual.
Speaker 1: It was not an automatic copier, so you had to
Speaker 1: do a lot of this work by hand, and it
Speaker 1: was more than a little challenging to operate by someone
Speaker 1: who wasn't familiar with the technology. Still, it was more
Speaker 1: efficient to produce copies using it than to hand type
Speaker 1: the documents. So despite the fact it was a little
Speaker 1: slow and a little cumbersome, had a high barrier to
Speaker 1: intrigue because you had to learn how to use it.
Speaker 1: It's still found a market. It was a modest market,
Speaker 1: but it found one, and this would presage the new
Speaker 1: name of the company. In nineteen fifty four, see Peter
Speaker 1: McCullough interviewed with the Halloyd Corporation. And McCulla had previously
Speaker 1: been the vice president of sales at the Lehigh Navigation
Speaker 1: Coal Sales Company, and he almost didn't take the gig
Speaker 1: because he came into the corporate offices of Halloyd and
Speaker 1: they seemed kind of rinky dink. According to McCulla the
Speaker 1: shelf of the that was in the executive's office was
Speaker 1: not really a shelf. It was repurposed crate, and he
Speaker 1: just felt that any place where the executive furniture happened
Speaker 1: to be made out of old crates probably wasn't on
Speaker 1: the up and up, or at least not like poised
Speaker 1: to take over the world. However, Joe Wilson could be
Speaker 1: a really convincing guy, and he talked a lot about
Speaker 1: his belief and innovation and their desire to grow, and
Speaker 1: he was able to convince McCullough to join. Now, McCullough
Speaker 1: would later come one of the become one of the
Speaker 1: iconic leaders of Xerox. So he'll be more important. In
Speaker 1: our part two episode in the company introduced a new
Speaker 1: technology called copy flow, and that's flow spelled f l
Speaker 1: O kiss magrats. It was an automated zero graphic machine
Speaker 1: that would create enlarged prints on a continuous roll of
Speaker 1: photographic paper, and it would pull those prints from microfilm
Speaker 1: original So you get some microfilm, it's got images on it.
Speaker 1: You feed the microfilm into the machine. This would then
Speaker 1: be able to produce enlarged copies, which would make it
Speaker 1: much easier to create multiple copies of the same document
Speaker 1: and simultaneously cut down on document storage space because you
Speaker 1: could just store the originals as microfilm, you didn't need
Speaker 1: to have big, bulky copies. The copy flow system eschewed
Speaker 1: the plate that previous copiers had relied upon and introduced
Speaker 1: a new component that would become incredibly important, the rotating drum.
Speaker 1: And a rotating drum allowed for much faster copying and
Speaker 1: became a standard piece of Xerox equipment in various copiers.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk more about how those copiers actually work
Speaker 1: in the next section of this episode, but before I
Speaker 1: get there, I wanted to add a little bit more
Speaker 1: about what was going on in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties. By nineteen fifty six, the zero Graphic
Speaker 1: division of Halloyd was contributing about of all the revenue
Speaker 1: for the company, and that percentage would grow over the
Speaker 1: next couple of years. By nineteen fifty eight, Halloyd executives
Speaker 1: saw the photo copied writing on the wall and the
Speaker 1: company underwent a transformation and was renamed Halloyd Xerox in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight. It was in nineteen fifty nine that
Speaker 1: the company introduced a flagship product that was a breakout success,
Speaker 1: and that was the nine fourteen copier. It was called
Speaker 1: the nine fourteen because it could handle paper sizes up
Speaker 1: to nine inches by fourteen inches. The first copyers shipped
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty and by nineteen sixty two the company
Speaker 1: had sold ten thousand units, which was twice the number
Speaker 1: they expected to sell. Plus they had a backlog of
Speaker 1: orders that were coming in, so they were not being there.
Speaker 1: They could not make them fast enough, which is a
Speaker 1: great problem to have. The success translated into dalla dalla bills, y'all.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty nine, the company's income was about two
Speaker 1: million dollars. Nineteen sixty the revenue would grow to two
Speaker 1: point six million. In nineteen sixty one, it was five
Speaker 1: point three million. That's also the year Halloyd Xerox dropped
Speaker 1: Halloyd from its name and just became Xerox nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen sixty two income had re thirteen point
Speaker 1: nine million. By nineteen sixty three and it hit twenty
Speaker 1: two point six million, So it's effectively almost doubling every year.
Speaker 1: In some cases more than doubling. The company saw incredible benefits,
Speaker 1: as Joe Wilson's argument that success would come by pursuing
Speaker 1: innovation seemed absolutely justified. Now, when we get back, I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you how photo copiers actually work, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be referring to an article that's on a
Speaker 1: little website called how Stuff Works, so you can actually
Speaker 1: follow along if you like, in your in your guide books.
Speaker 1: But for now, let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. But in Part two will take a look
Speaker 1: at how Xerox has made a huge impact on the
Speaker 1: way we interact with technology today, and a lot of
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with photo copiers. But Xerox
Speaker 1: is known for photo copiers so much so that the
Speaker 1: company has had to fight over the years a few
Speaker 1: times they think of eventually had to give it up.
Speaker 1: The fact that people would refer to making a photo
Speaker 1: copy as xeroxing something. There's the danger of this is
Speaker 1: that they named their company after a word they had
Speaker 1: already invented based on a Greek word for dry writing,
Speaker 1: right zerography zerography, and then calling it xerox Uh. So
Speaker 1: people began to just refer to the act of photo
Speaker 1: copying as xeroxing, and it became one of those terms
Speaker 1: like Kleenex or jello, where the use of it is
Speaker 1: so universal that the trademark is no longer really enforceable,
Speaker 1: not specifically in those instances, like you couldn't go out
Speaker 1: and make a photo copier and call it a xerox
Speaker 1: machine and have that printed on the side if you're
Speaker 1: not xerox, but you could call the act xeroxing, and
Speaker 1: no one's going to lift an eye because or an eyebrow. Rather,
Speaker 1: because it was universal, everyone called it xeroxing. But how's
Speaker 1: it actually were? And this is where we talk about
Speaker 1: photo connectivity and semiconductors and that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: you start with a drum. This drum is coded with
Speaker 1: a semiconductor material. Technically it tends to be selenium these days,
Speaker 1: just like they started to make that change when the
Speaker 1: Hallowy Corporation got involved. Selenium very useful material, semiconductor material.
Speaker 1: By exposing selenium to bright light, you end up building
Speaker 1: up a a charge, a strong positive charge on the
Speaker 1: surface of the selenium. It actually separates out the charge
Speaker 1: on the inner side of the drum, you have a
Speaker 1: negative charge. On the outer side of the drum, you
Speaker 1: have a positive charge. Uh. Actually that it's not even
Speaker 1: with the light that's actually just passing the drum next
Speaker 1: to a high voltage wire. It's called a corona wire.
Speaker 1: So you have these corona wires that charge up the
Speaker 1: drum by having electric current running through high voltage electric
Speaker 1: current running through him, this charge separates out. As I said,
Speaker 1: the light actually ends up making that charge change. It
Speaker 1: creates an electric conductivity wherever the light hits the drum.
Speaker 1: So when the light hits the drum, it allows electric
Speaker 1: current to pass through. Those charges that separated out are
Speaker 1: reconciled and you go back to a neutral charge on
Speaker 1: the drum. Any place where the light hits the drum
Speaker 1: you get a neutral charge. Any place where the light
Speaker 1: doesn't hit the drum, you still have that positive charge.
Speaker 1: So photocopiers, you get your image that you want a photocopy.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's a picture of a cute dog, and
Speaker 1: let's give this dog a name. We'll call him Tibalt.
Speaker 1: So you've got a picture of a cute dog named
Speaker 1: Tibolt and he's adorable, and everyone wants a copy of
Speaker 1: a picture of acute dog named Tibolt. How are you
Speaker 1: gonna make copies of it? Well, you go to your
Speaker 1: photo copy here and you slap that photo down on
Speaker 1: the scanner of the photo copier. What then happens is
Speaker 1: when you hit start a bright light that comes from
Speaker 1: an incandescent or fluorescent lamp. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: of any special frequency apart from you don't want something
Speaker 1: like red or infrared light. That's not gonna be powerful enough,
Speaker 1: but anything in the visible spectrum is fine outside of red.
Speaker 1: You have this bright light hit the picture of Tibolt,
Speaker 1: and it sends uh a reflection of that image down
Speaker 1: to hit this rotating drum that has previously been charged
Speaker 1: with an electro stat charge thanks to those two corona
Speaker 1: wires that were high voltage so this drum, before any
Speaker 1: light hits it, has got a positive charge on its surface.
Speaker 1: The any place on the image that is bright as
Speaker 1: white will reflect the light well down into the photocopier.
Speaker 1: It goes through a lens, hits another mirror, and then
Speaker 1: it hits the drum in the right location. As that
Speaker 1: light scans the original image, anything that's dark absorbs light
Speaker 1: more than reflects it, and so it's not reflecting nearly
Speaker 1: as much light down through this system. So those are
Speaker 1: areas of the drum that are not receiving light. Those
Speaker 1: areas of the drum remain positively charged. So anything that
Speaker 1: the light has touched has been neutralized, but the rest
Speaker 1: of that drum is still positively charged. As the drum rotates,
Speaker 1: it then comes in contact with toner, which is negatively charged.
Speaker 1: And we know through Coolum's law that positive and negative
Speaker 1: charges attract one another, right like charges repel opposite charges
Speaker 1: the tract. So you have these sections on the drum
Speaker 1: that are positively charged because the light never touched it,
Speaker 1: it represents the dark spots on that original image. They
Speaker 1: end up attracting toner. So the drum gets toner on it.
Speaker 1: As the drum continues to rotate, it comes in contact
Speaker 1: with a sheet of paper that has also been charged
Speaker 1: by passing close to one of these corona wires. So
Speaker 1: you have a very strong positive charge on that side
Speaker 1: of the piece of paper that's coming into contact with
Speaker 1: the drum. Those particles that are on the drum are
Speaker 1: still negatively charged. If the charge on the piece of
Speaker 1: paper is the positive charge on the piece of paper
Speaker 1: is greater than the one that's on the drum, it
Speaker 1: pulls that toner away from the drum and onto the paper.
Speaker 1: So essentially, whoever has the strongest electric charge winds. It's
Speaker 1: like a hug of war. So think of the positive
Speaker 1: charge on the drum as one side of a tug
Speaker 1: of war. The positive charge on the piece of paper
Speaker 1: is the other side of the tug of war. And
Speaker 1: on the drum side you've got Rick Moranis, and on
Speaker 1: the the paper side, you've got Dwayne the Rock Johnson.
Speaker 1: Dwayne the Rock Johnson's about to get coded in toner
Speaker 1: because he's gonna pull way harder than Rick Moranis is.
Speaker 1: So the toner moves to the piece of paper that
Speaker 1: has the strong positive charge to it, which then passes
Speaker 1: through a pair of rollers that are heated to fuse
Speaker 1: the toner to the paper. This is what finalizes that image.
Speaker 1: It's what makes you get a nice dry copy at
Speaker 1: the end of it. You don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: smearing ink or anything like that because it's all dried
Speaker 1: by the time it comes out. And then you have
Speaker 1: a copy of your original image. All the parts that
Speaker 1: were dark, how of the ton or attached to it.
Speaker 1: All the parts that were light don't have any ton
Speaker 1: or attached to it because again those light sections were
Speaker 1: neutralized on that rotating drum. This is all because of
Speaker 1: that photo conductivity of selenium and the semiconductor nature. So
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool to think that by playing with positive
Speaker 1: and negative electrical charges, you can attract ton or to
Speaker 1: a drum and then subsequently to a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: but only in the parts that are important to you
Speaker 1: for making your copy. Now, this is the basis of
Speaker 1: those rotating drum copiers. Not all copiers use rotating drums
Speaker 1: summer belt system as opposed to a drum system, but
Speaker 1: a lot of those early Xerox machines in fact used
Speaker 1: this rotating drum process. And part of the reason for
Speaker 1: that is because it allows for rapid copying. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the copiers that Xerox would introduce in the
Speaker 1: early sixties was called I Believed, and the reason was
Speaker 1: is it could do twenty four hundred copies in an hour,
Speaker 1: which at the time was spectacularly fast. Because I had
Speaker 1: this continuous rotating drum system. You just had to make
Speaker 1: sure you had enough paper to feed into it and
Speaker 1: enough toner to last, and you can do that. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that it's a really clever way of using
Speaker 1: physics to create a working product that ends up being
Speaker 1: of huge value to anyone who needs to make copies
Speaker 1: of stuff. And it's pretty neat to look into. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about it, you can go
Speaker 1: to house stuff works dot com. There's an article called
Speaker 1: how photo copiers work and you can read it. It's great.
Speaker 1: I've got it right in front of me, right here.
Speaker 1: It's a really helpful piece of information if you want
Speaker 1: to see in more detail, and it even has illustrations
Speaker 1: and animations to show you what that process is like.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad I had the opportunity to actually talk
Speaker 1: about how that technology works in this episode, because sometimes
Speaker 1: on text stuff we don't really get to talk about
Speaker 1: tech stuff that much, not from how it works angle,
Speaker 1: and this was a particularly interesting one. Now in our
Speaker 1: next episode, we're gonna look at how Xerox evolved past
Speaker 1: this initial approach. Obviously, they made a huge impact in
Speaker 1: the business world with the advent of these copiers, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about that too, about how Xerox grew
Speaker 1: as a company. But I can't wait to go into
Speaker 1: the next episode and talk about Xerox Park because that's
Speaker 1: a really interesting organization that again contributed ideas that were
Speaker 1: fundamentally important to the way we interact with technology today,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about that in our next episode.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any topics that you want me
Speaker 1: to cover in future episodes, whether it's a company or
Speaker 1: technology or a person. Maybe there's someone you want me
Speaker 1: to interview, let me know. Send me a message. My
Speaker 1: email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle of both of the is this tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W. And remember you can watch me record these
Speaker 1: episodes live at Twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. I
Speaker 1: also chat with people who are in the chat room
Speaker 1: in between recording sessions, and we have a grand old
Speaker 1: time talking about classic television series that only Jonathan remembers.
Speaker 1: So if you want to listen to an old man
Speaker 1: talk about bad sitcoms, or you know, watch me talk
Speaker 1: about tech live, that's probably a more attractive prospect. Go
Speaker 1: to twitch dot tv slash tech stuff and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because at house staff works dot
Speaker 1: com