Chapter 18
Royalty and Revenue Sharing
Essential Idea: Presell Products and Share the Revenue
Chester Carlson received a degree in physics from Caltech in 1930 and, even though it was the height of the Great Depression, landed a nice, albeit boring position in the patent office of an electronics company. His job was to assemble and duplicate by hand patent drawings. But given his penchant for inventing, Carlson decided that there had to be a better way. So he began to study photography, the physics of light, and printing. Eventually Carlson learned about photoconductivity—the method by which light affects physical materials.
Carlson decided to see if there was some way to use photoconductivity to capture an image and transfer it onto paper. He eventually was able to perfect a process he called “electrophotography.” On October 22, 1938 (10/22/38), in Astoria, Queens, New York, Carlson created a blurry yet legible electrophotographic copy that read, “10.-22.-38 Astoria.”
Today, that piece of paper is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian.
By the next year, Carlson had scraped together enough money to create a prototype—that didn't work. He then spent the next few years meeting with, demonstrating by hand, and getting turned down by GE, RCA, IBM, and everyone else. These years of fruitless leads led Carlson to financial ruin and divorce. Eventually he found a small, private foundation—the Battelle Memorial Institute—that was interested in his research, and the two parties ...
