This Mad Men era would come to a close in the 1980s as PCs began replacing typewriters. Carlson's invention would also be used to create the laser printer, which obviated single-function copiers. As a result, no one in the industry calls Xerox's machines copiers anymore. Instead, they are known as "multifunction printers."
That wasn't the only threat to Xerox's business. By the 1970s, Japanese competitors were offering their own cheaper version of Xerox's copiers. Xerox lost its effective monopoly, but managed to stay on the cutting edge of technology, Weilerstein says, by developing its own laser printer business. Then in 1990, Xerox introduced Docutech, a technology that let you turn a printer effectively into a printing press. Xerox scored another coup in 2000 with iGen, a color laser printer that could spit out 100 pages a minute. "By the mid-2000s, they didn't have anything exclusive at all," Weilerstein says, "and they began suffering economically."
Xerox wasn't hit as hard as its Rochester neighbor, Eastman Kodak, which is now a [shadow of its former self][1].
Partially that's because — unlike film — printing paper documents remains a lucrative business. There are sectors of the economy — including the federal government — where employees still print a few thousand pages a month. Weilerstein acknowledges that the use of print will continue to decline over time. "It's probably a generational factor," he says. However "it isn't really disappearing."
Bolstered by the continued need for multifunction printers, Xerox has the opportunity to reinvent itself as a provider of primarily digital documents and services. The company laid the groundwork for such a move by embracing the managed print services business in the last decade. MPS essentially outsources the printing aspect of the office and gives IT departments one less task to monitor.
However, since paper printing is on a long-term downward trend, Xerox is trying to anticipate where the market will go next. "Now the question is what will they do after this," says Weilerstein. "They will take this idea of a service that manages your printers and turn that into a service that handles how you handle docs in digital form."
" I think there's a great desire among IT [departments] to get rid of paper," says the IDC's Boyd. "A lot of people, including Xerox, are actively trying to help them."
Weilerstein's view is that since all communication is basically documents, Xerox has a chance to become a leader in "managed content services." Such services would help organizations cut down on the use of print. Though paper is still a useful communications medium, many printed pages are symptoms of problems involving poor interconnection between the different sources of information where workers obtain information and the different destinations to which they must apply it," Weilerstein wrote in a recent white paper on the subject.
MCS would address the advertising orders that a broadcast network still receives by fax or provide a means to let a chemical manufacturer's employees scan their handwritten notes into a searchable digital archive.
In promoting a largely paperless future, Xerox would not only transition its business but help cut down on needless waste. However, the company has lots of competition on the document front, most notably from Adobe, the inventor of the Portable Document Format (PDF).
Adobe, whose legacy is in desktop printing rather than hardware, appears to have a natural advantage over Xerox. Apple aside, it's rare that a company associated with the invention of an old technology manages to also become a leader in the technology that replaces it.
Yet even if Xerox ultimately fails, Carlson's contribution to tech history is assured, if a bit obscure to most. A serial inventor, Carlson didn't have much to show for his other ideas — including a raincoat with gutters and a shoe-cleaning machine — but his one great invention is a testament to how the market rewards perseverance and vision. His death was an illustration of how little we sometimes know of the inner life of public figures.
Almost exactly 30 years after Carlson and Kornei slaved over their invention in that Astoria apartment, Carlson took a trip back to New York from his Rochester home for a business meeting. Finding he had some down time, he ducked into a movie theater to catch He Who Rides a Tiger featuring Tom Bell and Judi Dench. After the movie, an usher saw Carlson, who appeared to be dozing in his seat. He hadn't. Carlson succumbed to a heart attack — his second that year.
He died with an estimated fortune of $150 million, making him one of the wealthiest men in the country in 1968. That estimate was wrong, though. Carlson had actually given away much of his wealth by then. As he told his wife, Carlson had a curious ambition for a business titan. He wanted to "die a poor man."
