In 1938 a frustrated twenty nine year old physicist-turned-patent lawyer invented something. Can you name him the date and his invention? Here's a hint: Astoria

gdec1

Chester F. Carlson (February 8, 1906 - September 19, 1968) was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle, Washington. He invented the process of instant copying which he called electrophotography, and which was subsequently named xerography and commercialized by the Haloid Corporation (Xerox). To make things easier, he hired Otto Kornei, an immigrant physicist who had fled the Nazi regime in Germany. They set up their laboratory in a back room of a house in Astoria, Queens. On October 22, 1938 they had their historic breakthrough. Kornei wrote the words 10.-22.-38 ASTORIA. in India ink on a glass microscope slide. The German prepared a zinc plate with a sulphur coating, darkened the room, rubbed the sulphur surface with a handkerchief to apply an electrostatic charge, then laid the slide on the zinc plate, exposing it to a bright, incandescent light. They removed the slide, sprinkled lycopodium powder to the sulphur surface, softly blew the excess away, and transferred the image to a sheet of wax paper. They heated the paper, melting the wax off, and had their first near-perfect duplicate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Carlson Sep 01 06, 12:01 PM

tjoebigham

Heck, I've got a trivia quiz on Carlson here on FunTrivia! Sep 01 06, 1:18 PM