ABSTRACT
Much has been written about electrophotography since it burst upon the office-place scene in about 1960, and much development has occurred in all sorts of applications beyond simply copying a document onto one side of a piece of 8.5 X 11" paper. The demonstra tion of the basic invention dates from 1938, and the first manual product, the Xerox Model A, came onto the market in 1949; the first automatic copier, the Xerox 914, appeared in 1959. The subject, then, is barely more than 50 years old. The sheer number of companies and people who have become involved in electrophotography due to its twin attractions of being a profitable business as well as an outstanding example of the need for a multidisciplined approach to unravel the science behind the early empirical methods, has produced a strong competition for both markets and inventions. The number of identifiably different ways of practicing electrophotography is very large and is driven by both a search for improvement and a search for a path not covered by someone else’s patents. The general approach is best summed up by a quote from the inimitable Mae West, “ When faced by a choice between two evils, I always pick the one I haven’t tried before!”
