Chester Couldn’t Sell His Kooky Invention. Joe Wilson Couldn’t Forget It.

Entrepreneurship breakthroughs can come in so many ways, including finding the yin to your yang.

Chester Carlson hated his job.

This was almost a century ago and for years, Carlson had worked in a patent office where his job was to duplicate patent drawings and specifications by hand. It was dull, tedious work, and he kept thinking there had to be a better way to make copies.

Carlson was also a tinkerer, so he started studying photography, light, paper, and electricity in his spare time. After years of experimenting in a crude lab in his Queens apartment, he finally made the world’s first xerographic copy.

It was blurry, but legible. The words on the page were “10-22-38 Astoria.”

That image is now part of the Smithsonian.

Strike One, Strike Two

Unfortunately, an image does not a business make.

Carlson tried to interest the major companies of the time in the invention. GE passed. RCA passed. IBM passed. Their answer, essentially, was that carbon paper worked fine.

Carlson then spent years looking for someone who could help develop the process. The search cost him money, strained his life, and still left him without a commercial product.

In 1947, Joe Wilson had read about a new photographic copying process and wanted to see it for himself. Wilson owned a small photographic company called Haloid, based in Rochester, NY. Wilson had grown up dreaming of building a company like Kodak. But Haloid, the company his father had founded, was not Kodak.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

The demonstration was not exactly a polished product launch, but Wilson saw something in the process that the big companies had missed.

“Of course it’s got a million miles to go before it will be marketable,” he said. “But when it does become marketable, we’ve got to be in the picture!”

Carlson had an invention that needed money, engineering, and someone willing to stick with it. Wilson had a company that needed a big new idea and that was the breakthrough. Carlson did not need another person to admire his invention and walk away. He needed a partner who could see where it might lead. Wilson did not need another small product. He needed something that could transform Haloid.

They needed each other.

Haloid agreed to fund development.

The first commercial machine, the Model A, came out in 1949. It was so cumbersome that it took 39 steps to make a copy. The much more successful Xerox 914 arrived in 1959, after more than a decade of development

But Haloid could not sell that $39,000 machine to most businesses, so Wilson’s team innovated again.

They would lease it out.

Customers paid $95 a month, got 2,000 copies, and paid extra for copies beyond that.

The 914 caught on and helped revolutionize business in the 1960s. Haloid changed its name to Xerox in 1961, and the company’s annual revenue topped $1 billion in 1968.

The Takeaway

The right partner doesn’t just believe in your idea. They bring something you don’t have. Carlson had the invention. Wilson had the ambition. Finding that mutual fit was the breakthrough.

Steal This Strategy

📖 Read: Your Small Business Boom. Steve’s latest book chock-full of strategies for finding opportunity and growing your business.

🖼️ See: The first Xerox ever. See the “10-22-38 Astoria” image that started it all.

📰 Read: “Making Copies,” Smithsonian Magazine: More on Carlson, Wilson, and the invention that became Xerox.

About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!