Photostat machine
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ThePhotostat machine,orPhotostat,was an earlyprojection photocopiercreated in thedecade of the 1900sby the Commercial Camera Company, which became the Photostat Corporation. The "Photostat" name, which was originally a trademark of the company, becamegenericized,and was often used to refer to similar machines produced by the RetinalGraph Company or toany copy made by any such machine.
History
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Background
[edit]The growth of business during theIndustrial Revolutioncreated the need for a more efficient means of transcription than hand copying.Carbon paperwas first used in the early 19th century. By the late 1840s copying presses were used to copy outgoing correspondence. One by one,other methodsappeared. These included the "manifold writer", developed fromChristoph Scheiner'spantographand used byMark Twain;copying baths; copying books; and roller copiers. Among the most significant of them was theBlue processin the early 1870s, which was mainly used to makeblueprintsof architectural and engineering drawings.Stencil duplicators(more commonly known as "Mimeograph machines" ) surfaced in 1874, and theCyclostylein 1891. All were manual and most involved messy fluids.
Retinal and Photostat machines
[edit]George C. Beidler ofOklahoma Cityfounded the RetinalGraph Company in 1906 or 1907, producing the first photographic copying machines; he later moved the company toRochester, New Yorkin 1909 to be closer to theHaloid Company,his main source ofphotographic paperand chemicals.
The RetinalGraph Company was acquired by the Haloid Company in 1935. In 1948 Haloid purchased the rights to produceChester Carlson'sxerographicequipment and in 1958 the firm was reorganized to Haloid Xerox, Inc., which in 1961 was renamed Xerox Corporation.[1]Haloid continued selling RetinalGraph machines into the 1960s.
The Photostat brand machine, differing in operation from the RetinalGraph but with the same purpose of the photographic copying of documents, was invented inKansas Cityby Oscar T. Gregory in 1907. A directory of the city from 1909 shows his "Gregory Commercial Camera Company". By 1910, Gregory had co-filed a patent application with Norman W. Carkhuff, of the photography department of theUnited States Geological Survey,for a specific type of photographic camera, for quickly and easily photographing small objects, with a further object "to provide a camera of the type known as 'copying cameras' that will be simple and convenient [...]"[2]In 1911, the Commercial Camera Company ofProvidence, Rhode Island,was formed. By 1912, Photostat brand machines were in use, as evidenced by a record of one at the New York Public Library. By 1913, advertisements described the Commercial Camera Company as headquartered at Rochester and with a licensing and manufacturing relationship withEastman Kodak.[3]The pair filed another U.S. patent application in 1913 further developing their ideas.[4]By 1920, distribution agency in various European markets was by theAlfred Herbert companies.[5]The Commercial Camera Company apparently became the Photostat Corporation around 1921, for "Commercial Camera Company" is described as a former name of Photostat Corporation in a 1922 issue ofPatent and Trade Mark Review.[6]For at least 40 years the brand was widespread enough that its name wasgenericizedby the public.
The Photostat Corporation was eventually absorbed byItekin 1963.
Description
[edit]Both RetinalGraph and Photostat machines consisted of a largecamerathat photographed documents or papers and exposed an imagedirectlyonto rolls of sensitized photographic paper that were about 350 feet (110 m) long. Aprismwas placed in front of thelensto reverse the image. After a 10-second exposure, the paper was directed to developing and fixing baths, then either air- or machine-dried. Since the print was directly exposed, without the use of an intermediate film, the result was anegativeprint. A typical typewritten document would appear on the photostat print with a black background and white letters. Thanks to the prism, the text would remain legible. Producing photostats took about two minutes in total. The result could, in turn, be photostated again to make any number of positive prints.
The photographic prints produced by such machines are commonly referred to as "photostats" or "photostatic copies". The verbs "photostat", "photostatted", and "photostatting" refer to making copies on such a machine in the same way that the trademarked name "Xerox"was later used to refer to any copy made by means ofelectrostatic photocopying.People who operated these machines were known as photostat operators.
It was the expense and inconvenience of photostats that drove Chester Carlson to study electrophotography. In the mid-1940s Carlson sold the rights to his invention – which became known asxerography– to the Haloid Company and photostatting soon sank into history.
See also
[edit]References
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Notes
- ^Ingham, John N. (1983).Biographical dictionary of American business leaders.Greenwood. pp. 1648–1649.ISBN0-313-21362-3.
- ^U.S. patent 1,167,356
- ^Commercial Camera Company (1913-06-19),"Commercial Camera Company Photostat advertisement",Engineering News,69(25), New York: Hill Publishing Company: 6.
- ^U.S. patent 1,127,231
- ^Commercial Camera Company (1920-07-01),"Commercial Camera Company Photostat advertisement",American Machinist,53(1), New York: McGraw-Hill: 231.
- ^Staff (August 1922),"Earliest printed reports of the trade mark decisions of the Court Of Appeals of the District Of Columbia and the Commissioner Of Patents",Patent and Trade Mark Review,20(11), William Wallace White Company: 347.
Bibliography
- "Antique Copying Machines".Early Office Museum.RetrievedJuly 8,2019.
- Kingslake, Rudolf (1974)."A History of The Rochester, NY Camera and Lens Companies".RetrievedJuly 8,2019.
- Vij, Illa (December 4, 1999)."Fact File: Chester F. Carlson".The Tribune.India.
External links
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- Glen Gable (2005),Heavy Metal Madness: Making Copies from Carbon to Kinkos,CreativePro
- David Owen (2005),"Copies in Seconds",Engineering and Science,68 (3). pp. 24–31. ISSN 0013-7812 (PDF)
