Copies in Seconds: Chester Carlson and the Birth of the Xerox Machine

A lone inventor and the story of how one of the most revolutionary inventions of the twentieth century almost didn't happen.
Introduced in 1960, the first plain-paper office copier is unusual among major high-technology inventions in that its central process was conceived by a single person. Chester Carlson grew up in unspeakable poverty, worked his way through junior college and the California Institute of Technology, and made his discovery in solitude in the depths of the Great Depressio...