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 ...
Steve Jobs toured Xerox in Palo Alto and saw PARC a precursor to his development of the Mac. Xerox employees had proposed that their company market their computer OS. NY said, no we’re a repo machine company. Had they done so Apple would probably not be around today, beaten to the market by Xerox.
I’ll bet you got more than your fair share of paper cuts. ;>)
better version than mine in post #38.
And they also passed on an opportunity to own the Fax patent, I seem to recall.
The PC stands for Paper Cassette, what we call the tray, and “load letter” means just that, put letter sized paper into the tray.
Oh. Thanks for that. Have wondered for decades.
One of the best scenes ever.
Printers are evil incarnate.
Clip Courtesy of: Triumph of the Nerds
“That said the Xerox 9700 big boy laser ( 2 pages/sec in the early 80s) was phenomenal.”
I work on equipment with this man’s technology every day.
...and yes the 9700 was a beast in it’s day.
yup
We’ve got two Xerox laser printers: a Work Centre b/w office printer and a C9000 color printer.
They’re both great machines!
“Damn it feels good to be a gangsta!”
It's questions like these that, over the years, prompted tech support to adopt the acronym, RYFM, or 'riffem'. (Read Your F'ing Manual)
Another diagnostic statement applied was, 'There seems to be a problem with the interface between the chair and the keyboard."
LOL!
I am known by everyone in the US base of the corporation I work for as the supreme hater of printers.
Especially since I am the guy stuck with supporting them.
Put that same thought to the guy who ‘accidently invented the “POST IT” tags.
RTFM. Which used to be one the best FTP sites in the world, scans of all the manual. ftp.rtfm.com
Oh hey it’s still there, changed though, rtfm.mit.edu
Of course in an office situation usually the IT guy has the manual for the printer at the secretary’s desk. And she’s just stuck.
“OK...who the invented the modern strobe light?”
Bill Strobe.
I really like my laser printer. No more printer destroying ink clogs. Thank you Mr. Starkweather you relieved me of much frustration, stress and anger.
They were the product of a decentralized and individualized education system that has since been homogenized and forced into a one size fits all mold by politicians, unions, Big Pharma and petty beaurocrats.
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