Xerox

In 1906, a company called The Haloid Photographic Company was founded in Rochester, New York, focusing on photographic paper and equipment. The story of modern Xerox, however, begins with physicist Chester Carlson, who in 1938 invented a dry-printing process called xerography. It took years of refinement, but Joseph C. Wilson, considered the founder of the modern company, saw the potential. In 1946, his family's company, Haloid, signed an agreement to commercialize Carlson's invention. A pivotal moment came in 1959 with the launch of the Xerox 914, the first automatic plain-paper copier. This machine was a game-changer, making office copying accessible and transforming workflows. The success was so immense that the company, which had renamed itself Haloid Xerox in 1958, became Xerox Corporation in 1961 and went public on the New York Stock Exchange the same year. The name 'Xerox' itself became synonymous with photocopying. Seeking to define the 'office of the future,' Xerox established the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1970. PARC became a legendary innovation hub, developing foundational technologies like the graphical user interface (GUI), the computer mouse, and Ethernet networking. While many of these inventions weren't successfully commercialized by Xerox itself, they laid the groundwork for the personal computing revolution, famously influencing companies like Apple. Today, Xerox continues to focus on document technology and services, a journey that started with a simple idea for 'dry writing'.