American physicist who was the inventor of xerography (electrophotography), an electrostatic dry-copying process that found applications ranging from office copying to reproducing out-of-print books.

By the age of 14 Carlson was supporting his invalid parents, yet he managed to earn a college degree from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 1930. After a short time spent with the Bell Telephone Company, he obtained a position with the patent department of P.R. Mallory Company, a New York electronics firm.

Plagued by the difficulty of getting copies of patent drawings and specifications, Carlson began in 1934 to look for a quick, convenient way to copy line drawings and text. Since numerous large corporations were already working on photographic or chemical copying processes, he turned to electrostatics for a solution to the problem. Four years later he succeeded in making the first xerographic copy. Carlson obtained the first of many patents for the xerographic process in 1940 and for the next four years tried unsuccessfully to interest someone in developing and marketing his invention. More than 20 companies turned him down. Finally, in 1944, he persuaded Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio, a nonprofit industrial research organization, to undertake developmental work. In 1947 a small firm in Rochester, N.Y., the Haloid Company (later the Xerox Corporation), obtained the commercial rights to xerography, and 11 years later Xerox introduced its first office copier. Carlson's royalty rights and stock in Xerox Corporation made him a multimillionaire.