Take a lifelong desire to change the world through invention, a painful case of arthritis, near-sightedness and an incredibly dull job as a patent analyst, and what you get would be inventor Chester Carlson (1906-1968), the father of the photocopier. Carlson hated spending hours and hours reproducing patent proposals – complete with drawings – by hand. Carbon paper and mimeographs led to poor-quality copies, which didn’t work for filing with the US Patent Office.

Inspired to develop an automated way to create high-quality copies of text and graphics, Carlson spent years doing research in his home kitchen. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “He had an idea for a reproduction technique based on photo-conductivity, in which some materials change their electrical properties when exposed to light. Years of this research led to a patent in 1942 for this process, called electric photography.” Carlson spent two decades shopping the invention to major companies like IBM, RCA and GE, all of which rejected it.

In 1959, the Haloid Company, which would later change its name to Xerox, accepted and began to develop the invention. It took Carlson at Haloid another few years to develop a practical version that businesses were willing to purchase and use, and the modern photocopier was born.

Because Xerox pioneered the technology, people came to use “Xerox” as both a noun and a verb (i.e., “I’ll need a Xerox of that,” or, “Could you please Xerox that for me?”) — but actually, that’s trademark infringement. The correct term is “photocopy,” because other companies besides Xerox now make photocopiers.

You can easily buy discount toner for your photocopier with your regular discount office supplies by entering the model number of your machine on our discount “Ink and Toner” page.

Discount ink and toner is needed for all offices as well as homes. Anyone with a printer or photocopier have a great need for discount ink and discount toner.