[Anonymous]

Xerox workers ‘recharge’ to remember inventor
February  2006 – Chester Carlson, the inventor of xerography, would have been 100 years old today.
To
celebrate, Xerox Corp. workers worldwide are getting an extra day off.
Xerox Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Anne M. Mulcahy made the
announcement during a company Webcast Tuesday.Mulcahy told employees
that she hoped the extra day – to be taken at mutually agreeable times
for employees and their supervisors – would help employees “to
celebrate the spirit of Chester Carlson’s innovation and to energize
you for growing the business in 2006.”
“Use the time to recharge your batteries,” she said.
Carlson’s
spirit also included a heaping measure of dogged persistence. It took
the better part of two decades for Carlson to find a business partner
willing to take a risk with him.
The partner: the then-unknown
Haloid Co. in Rochester. Haloid, later renamed Xerox, introduced the
Xerox 914 in 1960, a full 22 years after Carlson and an assistant
discovered xerography in a Queens apartment.
Carlson spent the last
years of his life giving away his wealth. He donated an estimated $100
million to a variety of causes nationwide and many landmarks in this
community bear his name.
Catherine Carlson, the daughter of
Chester’s wife Dorris, also chairs the Chester and Dorris Carlson
Charitable Trust. In an interview Tuesday, she said Chester Carlson,
though humble, always recognized the power of the technology he helped
usher into the world. “Dorris asked him one day, ‘Did you think it
would be this big?'” Catherine Carlson said. “He said ‘yes.’ He had
unbelievable faith in it.” 

[Author]

February 9, 2006 at 9:48 AM