In 1946, Carlson signed an agreement with Haloid Photographic Company to develop it as a commercial product.
It was almost 18 years before a fully automated process was developed, the key breakthrough being the use of a cylindrical drum coated with selenium instead of a flat plate.
The drums in the copiers originally developed by Xerox Corporation were manufactured with a surface coating of amorphous selenium (more recently ceramic or organic photoconductor (OPC)), applied by vacuum deposition.
Photoconductors using organic compounds are electrochemically charged vice versa to the preceding system in order to exploit their native properties in printing.
[4] Organic photoconductors are now preferred because they can be deposited on a flexible, oval or triangular, belt instead of a round drum, facilitating significantly smaller device size.
Essentially, a corona discharge is generated by a very thin wire 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 inch (6.35 to 12.7 mm) away from the photoconductor.
[4] In a laser or LED printer, modulated light is projected onto the drum surface to create the latent image.
In addition, the mix is manipulated with a magnetic roller to present to the surface of the drum or belt a brush of toner.
The toner image is permanently fixed to the paper using either a heat and pressure mechanism (hot roll fuser) or a radiant fusing technology (oven fuser) to melt and bond the toner particles into the medium (usually paper) being printed.
When the transferred image was brought into proximity with the vapor from the evaporating liquid, the result was a perfectly fixed copy without any of the distortion or toner migration which can occur with the other methods.
Any remaining toner, that did not transfer in step 6, is removed from the drum surface by a rotating brush under suction, or a squeegee known as the cleaning blade.
The development of xerography has led to new technologies that have the potential to eventually eradicate traditional offset printing machines.
Xerographic documents (and the closely related laser printer printouts) can have excellent archival durability, depending on the quality of the paper used.
If low-quality paper is used, it can yellow and degrade due to residual acid in the untreated pulp; in the worst case, old copies can literally crumble into small particles when handled.
However, xerographic copies are vulnerable to undesirable toner transfer if they are stored in direct contact or close proximity to plasticizers, which are present in looseleaf binders made with PVC.
In extreme cases, the ink toner will stick directly to the binder cover, pulling away from the paper copy and rendering it illegible.
The first animated feature film to use this process was One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), although the technique was already tested in Sleeping Beauty, released two years earlier.
[8] Art critic Roy Proctor said of artist/curator Louise Neaderland during her residency for the exhibition Art ex Machina at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, "She's living proof that, when a new technology begins to be mass-produced, artists will be curious enough—and imaginative enough—to explore its creative uses.