Posted on 01/20/2020 10:00:05 AM PST by oh8eleven
Mr. Starkweather was working as a junior engineer in the offices of the Xerox Corporation in Rochester, N.Y., in 1964 — several years after the company had introduced the photocopier to American office buildings — when he began working on a version that could transmit information between two distant copiers, so that a person could scan a document in one place and send a copy to someone else in another.
He decided that this could best be done with the precision of a laser, another recent invention, which can use amplified light to transfer images onto paper. But then he had a better idea: Rather than sending grainy images of paper documents from place to place, what if he used the precision of a laser to print more refined images straight from a computer?
At the Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, Mr. Starkweather built the first working laser printer in 1971 in less than nine months. By the 1990s, it was a staple of offices around the world. By the new millennium, it was nearly ubiquitous in homes as well.
“We still use the same fundamental engine to print billions of pages a day,” said Doug Fairbairn, a staff director at the Computer History Museum who worked alongside Mr. Starkweather at PARC. “It was all Gary’s idea.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In IT for years and never heard of him
Too bad Charles Starkweather is better known
LOL!
Remember when you could only Lease a XEROX Copier?
It was like the Telephone in your Home. You rented them from the Phone Company, you didn’t own them outright.
OK...who the invented the modern strobe light?
Now you can own a laser printer and a telephone but have to lease a car...............
Timothy Leary?..................
It’s easy to confuse “PRINTER” with “POINTER.”
...all the while claiming “We are fighting for you.” What’s worse, the gullible rubes fall for that same happy horseshit year after year after year.
I have a vintage Xerox mouse somewhere around here. it has a stainless steel base as well as a stainless steel mouse ball... If I understand it right, they invented that as well...
Wow you made me look, but
it was said by EG&G’s Edgerton
to be inspired by Charles Stark Draper
The serial killer sadly came to mind instead
Check out this article and comments ... https://zurb.com/blog/steve-jobs-and-xerox-the-truth-about-inno
One of the best scenes. Ever. I can hear the music in my head.
(”’PC LOAD LETTER’ - What the f*** does that mean?” I always wondered what that meant myself.)
First ones I saw were line printer replacements.
Turns out it didn’t burn the letters on the paper.
The real rise of personal laser printers took off after Steve Jobs got involved. Up until then, they were the office behemoths that the obit writes about. Jobs brilliantly saw the combination of the Mac, the new PostScript printing language, low-cost laser printers, the AppleTalk communications protocol and personal computer software for desktop publishing. From Wiki...
Jobs saw the LPB-CX at Xerox while negotiating for supplies of 3.5" floppy disk drives for the upcoming Apple Macintosh computer.John Warnock had left Xerox to found Adobe Systems in order to commercialize PostScript and AppleTalk in a laser printer they intended to market. Jobs was aware of Warnock's efforts, and he started working on convincing Warnock to allow Apple to license PostScript for a new printer that Apple would sell. Negotiations between Apple and Adobe over the use of Postscript began in 1983 and an agreement was reached in December 1983, one month before Macintosh was announced. Jobs eventually arranged for Apple to buy $2.5 million in Adobe stock.
At about the same time, Jonathan Seybold introduced Paul Brainerd to Apple, where he learned of Apple's laser printer efforts and saw the potential for a new program using the Mac's GUI to produce PostScript output for the new printer. Arranging his own funding through a venture capital firm, Brainerd formed Aldus and began development of what would become PageMaker. The VC coined the term "desktop publishing" during this time.
The LaserWriter was announced at Apple's annual shareholder meeting on January 23, 1985, the same day Aldus announced PageMaker. Shipments of the LaserWriter began in March 1985 at the retail price of $6,995, significantly more than the HP model. However, the LaserWriter featured AppleTalk support that allowed the printer to be shared among as many as sixteen Macs, meaning that its per-user price could fall to under $450, far less expensive than HP's less-advanced model. In 1988, the LaserWriter II was introduced at a much lower price point.
My wife worked at Apple during the Apple II, Apple III and Mac development days, leaving in 1988. After using a horrendous, screeching dot-matrix printer at home, we were able to purchase a LaserWriter II at a deep company discount in 1988.
So MANY brilliant minds came together during that period in the early and mid 80s that transformed everything we do in business. The irony is that laser printers are so commoditized today and people are finding less and less need to print pages that HP and Xerox are now in acquisition / merger discussions and are trying to figure out how to eventually get out of that money-losing business. HP thinks their printing future may be 3D additive printing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Eugene_Edgerton
LOL...conclusions...”cats love lasers”
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