Page 310 - Encyclopedia of Business and Finance

eobf_F 7/5/06 3:02 PM Page 287

F

FACSIMILE • In 1906 the Haloid Company (which later became
REPRODUCTION the Xerox Corporation) was founded to sell photo-
graphic paper for its early version of today’s copier.
Facsimile reproduction means making an exact copy of
It was expensive, impractical, and difficult to use.
anything imprinted on paper (words, pictures, graphics,
maps, charts, or other types of pictorial media) using elec- • In 1913 Edouard Belin invented the Belinograph, a
tronic devices such as copiers, facsimile (fax) machines, portable facsimile machine capable of using ordinary
printers, scanners, digital cameras, and any other similar phone lines.
reprographic equipment. Whether reproducing informa- • In the 1920s, a copying machine called a duplicat-
tion either electronically or on paper, producing quality ing machine, considered one of the first modern
copies that are acceptable to the task being performed is of examples of efficient industrial design was intro-
the utmost importance. duced by the Gestetner Company.
• The death knell for carbon paper was sounded in
HISTORICAL FACTS OF FACSIMILE 1937 when American law student Chester Carlson
REPRODUCTION
invented the electrostatic dry-copying process of
• One of the earliest methods used to make a printed duplication that became known as xerography. This
copy was the invention of carbon paper by a Briton process used the effect of light on photoconductivity
named J. W. Swan around 1862; it was not used in and led to the phenomenal success of the Xerox
offices, however, until sometime later. This type of Corporation’s commercial copy machine introduced
carbon paper provided a somewhat less than perfect in 1959. The major problem with this copier was
copy of typed material and provided a choice
that it was heat-sensitive and resulted in paper
between very messy carbon paper that made several scorching.
copies or single-use carbon paper that was much
easier to use. • After World War II (1939–1945), 3M and Eastman
Kodak introduced the Thermo-Fax and Verifax
• A duplicating machine called the mimeograph copiers. While the machines were relatively inexpen-
began to be used in the late 1890s. Copies were pro-
sive and easy to use, they required special paper that
duced by typing on a lightly oiled surface called a was extremely expensive, and the copies were of
master. This process involved retyping an original
document, a very time-consuming process. As time poor quality.
passed, the mimeograph machine was improved • Dot-matrix printers were introduced in 1971, pro-
enough to permit masters to be reused if stored viding a reasonably efficient way to reproduce com-
properly. puter-generated information on paper.

287