Photocopier

Hello. I am a Photocopier. Before I was born, the world was a very slow place for sharing ideas written on paper. Imagine if you drew the most wonderful picture of a dragon and wanted to give a copy to all of your friends. You would have to draw that same dragon over and over again. Your hand would get so tired. If a teacher wanted to give a worksheet to her class, she had to write it on the chalkboard, and every student had to copy it down. It took so much time. My inventor saw this and thought, “There must be a better, faster way to share words and pictures.”. He dreamed of a machine that could make a perfect copy with just a flash of light and a puff of special dust. That’s where my story begins, with a big problem that needed a clever, magical solution.

My inventor was a very smart and patient man named Chester Carlson. He worked in an office and had to copy long, boring documents all day long by hand. His fingers would get smudged with ink, and he would think about how much time he was wasting. He loved science and read many books about how light and electricity worked. One day, a brilliant idea sparked in his mind. He learned about static electricity, the same fizzy energy that can make a balloon stick to a wall after you rub it on your hair. He wondered if he could use that static stickiness to make copies. He imagined using a bright flash of light to make a sort of shadow picture of the words on a special plate. Then, a dark powder would stick to the places where the letters were. It was a brand new idea he called xerography, which means “dry writing.” He worked for years in a small room, trying to make his idea work. Finally, on October 22nd, 1938, he did it. He wrote “10-22-38 ASTORIA.” on a glass slide, and with a bright flash and some powder, he made the very first perfect copy. That copy was me. I was born.

From that very first copy on a small piece of waxed paper, I started to grow. It took a long time and a lot of hard work, but eventually, I became a big, helpful machine called the Xerox 914 that you could find in offices, schools, and libraries. I was so excited. I said, “I can make mornings easier.”. With just the push of a button, I could go whirr, flash, click, and a warm, clean copy would slide out. Teachers could suddenly give a fun story or a math puzzle to every single student in their class at the same time. Artists could share their drawings, and workers could share important plans in minutes instead of hours. I helped ideas fly around the world. I made it possible for more people to learn, create, and share their amazing thoughts. And even now, I am proud to help people turn one good idea into many.