9.  Fund and negotiate research agreements for the invention

By the early 1940s Carlson had no or few funds to invest further; and additionally he had growing responsibilities having become the head of the P. R. Mallory patent department.

His work at his firm resulted in a 1944 presentation by Carlson to scientists and engineers of the Battelle Memorial Institute. It went unusually well.

The institute had been established by Gordon Battelle, a wealthy Ohio industrialist, who never married and left his entire estate of $US1.5 million to the foundation of an institute dedicated to 'education in connection with and the encouragement of creative and research work and the making of discoveries and inventions in connection with the metallurgy of coal, iron, steel, zinc and their allied industries,' among other things.

In late 1945 Carlson and the Battelle Memorial Institute settled a first agreement which Carlson described as 'essentially an agency agreement'. Owen writes (at page 117) of Carlson overview of that contract:

• 'I appointed them as the exclusive agent for my patents and inventions in this field and they promised to put into the package any inventions they made. They promised to use diligence to obtain licences. They agreed to do some research, although there was no dollar value put on the amount of effort they were to put into research. We were to share any returns on royalties that would come out of the commercial development on a 60-40 basis, 60 per cent for Battelle and 40 per cent to me.' 

Unfortunately, even with the institute behind him, no interest was attracted from others despite further constant demonstrations, to Eastman Kodak, Harris Seybold Company and others.

Battelle itself spent merely $US702 on electrophotography research in 1944, writes Owen at page 118, which was little more than what Carlson had paid Otto Kornei back in 1938 and 1939. In 1945 research expenditure rose to roughly $US7,000.

10. Negotiate licensing agreements

Nearing the mid-1940s the Radio News publicity came in handy.

John Dessauer, a scientist at the Haloid Company saw a condensed version of the Radio News news article in a monthly technical bulletin published by Eastman Kodak. Haloid produced photographic paper and was interested in developing a new line of business, in a field that was not dominated by a powerful competitor like Kodak was for Haloid. Dessauer thought electrophotography might suit. Dessauer showed the Radio News abstract to Haloid's president, Joseph C. Wilson. Wilson gave the alliance a green light.

Dessaur, Carlson & Wilson

Haloid and Battelle came to a formal agreement, through which:

• Haloid acquired a non-exclusive licence to manufacture electrophotography-based copying machines intended to produce fewer than 20 copies of an original;
• for an initial $US10,000, Battelle obtained rights for a year, with options to renews for $US12,500 in 1948, $US20,000 in 1949, $US25,000 in 1950, and $US35,000 in 1951;
• Battelle would spend this money for research on the fundamental process;
• Haloid would do its own research on treated papers to improve the process;
• the two research staffs would work together in their respective areas of responsibility; and
• Haloid would pay Battelle a royalty of eight per cent on any sales of products embodying the patented principles, once a certain sales volume had been reached.

But the excitement which followed signature did not last. Carlson left his job at Mallory in late 1945, roughly a year after signing his agency agreement with Battelle. Progress at Battelle and Haloid was slow. During all of 1947 and 1948, the first two years of the licensing agreement, Haloid did no electrophotography research of its own. 

Finally in 1948 funding for electrophotography research appeared from an unexpected source, the Signal Corps (part of the US military) which agreed to invest $US100,000. Military planners, three years after Hiroshima, had decided that battlefields in the future were likely to be contaminated by thermonuclear radiation and that conventional photography would therefore be useless since silver halide emulsions respond to radiation making film fog.

Unfortunately the contract between Haloid and Signal Corps, while welcome investment, did not attract other new investors or licensees.