Gary Starkweather 1938 – 2019

Biography

Gary Starkweather didn’t invent the laser printer—he unleashed it. Working at Xerox’s legendary PARC research facility in the 1970s, this Lansing-born engineer figured out how to marry laser technology with xerography, creating the blueprint for the machines that would revolutionize office work. While the tech world celebrated silicon valley darlings, Starkweather was quietly building the infrastructure that made modern document production possible.

His vision didn’t just change how offices operated; it fundamentally altered what was technically feasible. The laser printer became the workhorse of business and publishing, enabling everything from desktop publishing to high-speed document reproduction at scale. Starkweather’s innovation proved that sometimes the most transformative breakthroughs happen not in the spotlight, but in corporate labs where engineers solve real problems with elegant precision.

Starkweather passed away in December 2019 in Orlando at 81, leaving behind a legacy embedded in every office building and creative studio worldwide—a quiet revolution printed one page at a time.