First Xerox Copy October 22, 1938 Chester F. Carlson and Otto Kornei succeed in electronically copying the message from a glass slide to a sheet of wax paper. Xerography is from the Greek words xeros (“dry”) and graphein (“writing”). Kornei was not impressed with the results and left Carlson. Carlson would wait until exactly 10 years later to the day to announce his discovery to the world. He approached IBM with his invention, but they turned it down. In 1947, Carlson sold the rights to the Haloid Company (later renamed Xerox), who used the technology to create the Xerox 914 in 1959. It was the first plain paper photocopier, and has been called the “most successful product of all time.” rochestermilitary.com