Carlson, Chester Floyd

Carlson, Chester Floyd, 1906–68, American inventor; b. Seattle, Wash. A patent lawyer, he invented (1938) xerography, a method of electrostatic printing. For the next two decades he struggled to find a company that would produce his copying machine, finally finding the Haloid Co., which first marketed a Xerox copier in 1959 and subsequently made a fortune under its new name, the Xerox Corp.

See biography by D. Owen (2004).