Thermofax
More info
- Creator
- Carl Miller (3M)
- Released
- 1950
- Type
- Copier
3M's 1950 copying process that burned the copy into being with infrared light — the office's first seconds-fast copier, whose copies darkened in the sun.
Carl Miller at 3M patented the principle: shine infrared through the original, carbon-based writing absorbs the heat and darkens a heat-sensitive coated paper held in contact. No liquids, no darkroom — a finished copy in seconds, nearly a decade before the Xerox 914. The catch was the paper: expensive, and the copies kept darkening with heat and light until archive files went unreadable.
Xerography took the offices, but the Thermofax got two afterlives. It turned paper originals into transparency film and became the overhead projector's faithful companion — and tattoo artists buy used machines to this day to burn design stencils, using carbon-rich ink just like in 1950.