Patrick Henry appears to be like again on the lifetime of Xerox’s Peter Crean, one of many graphic communications business’s most groundbreaking technologists, who handed away final month.
Peter Crean (heart) with colleagues Henry Freedman (Picture Take a look at Labs), Peter Dundas (Picture Take a look at Labs), Robert Eller (Rochester Institute of Know-how), and Eric Zeise (Picture Take a look at Labs).
The graphic communications business misplaced considered one of its most groundbreaking technologists with the passing of Peter A. Crean on December 23, 2023.
He died in Rochester, N.Y., simply hours earlier than the demise of Dorothy Crean, his spouse of 55 years.
The holder of a doctorate in nuclear physics from Princeton College, Crean joined Xerox Corp. in 1970 as a scientist on the firm’s analysis heart in Webster, N.Y. Over the subsequent 4 a long time, he developed or co-developed most of the applied sciences that turned the constructing blocks of digital printing and imaging because it exists at this time.
In 1970, for instance, he was considered one of three members of an engineering workforce that produced the primary laser printer. At the start of the listing of 40 patents he created for Xerox was the corporate’s first high-quality, high-speed CCD doc scanner. He would go on to make elementary contributions in practically all areas of manufacturing printing and imaging for Xerox, from which he retired in 2010.
The innovations named in Crean’s patents counsel the scope and complexity of his analysis. For instance:
- Hybrid single-pass, multi-pass full coloration printing system
- Strategies to regulate look of gloss ranges for printed textual content and pictures
- Web page parallel raster picture processing
- Minimizing spectrophotometer affect on spot coloration accuracy
- Web page parallel RIP with interleaved chunks
- Pipelined structure for patterned halftone technology
- Inkjet printer droplet top sensing management
Improvements Below the Hood
Crean and different Xerox researchers discovered a technique to run imaging and compression algorithms for variable printing on high-performance video chips—an utility that yielded larger print speeds and higher imaging high quality at decrease value. Developments like these underlay the success of Xerox merchandise from the landmark DocuTech 135 Manufacturing Writer to the equally iconic DocuColor iGen3 Digital Manufacturing Press.
“We’re saddened to be taught in regards to the latest passing of Dr. Peter A. Crean, who joined Xerox in 1970 and labored as a researcher for over 40 years,” stated Justin Capella, a spokesperson for the corporate. “A pioneer of printing expertise, Dr. Crean’s legacy leaves an enduring affect on Xerox.”
“I cherished working with him,” recalled Frank Steenburgh, the Xerox gross sales government who led the market launches of the DocuTech and the iGen3. Each time technical questions arose, “he all the time both understood or discovered and acquired again to me. He may talk. I trusted him.”
A specific present of Crean’s, stated Steenburgh, was his skill to translate expertise from the lab into real-world purposes “in a product that was prepared for the market.” He’s remembered at Xerox as one of many first engineers to include gross sales workforce and buyer suggestions into the event of latest applied sciences.
After retiring from Xerox as a Senior Analysis Fellow, Crean partnered with Henry Freedman, an professional in imaging and print sciences, Dr. Peter Dundas, a former principal coloration scientist for Xerox, and Eric Zeise, a analysis scientist for Eastman Kodak, in Know-how Watch–Picture Take a look at Labs, a developer of picture and coloration measurement instruments for print purposes.
There, he was a part of a undertaking that for the primary time measured the power of digital printing to match, and even exceed, the standard of offset lithography all through a print run. In 2017, the Picture Take a look at Labs workforce acquired an InterTech Know-how Award for ImageGrader™, a system that speeds and simplifies the evaluation of picture high quality of offset and digital presses.
A Legacy to Keep in mind
Crean was the 2009 recipient of the Robert F. Reed Know-how Medal from the Technical Affiliation of the Graphic Arts (TAGA). The award acknowledges scientists and engineers who contribute to important enhancements within the graphic communications business.
In accordance with Freedman, the highest three “elementary recreation changers” of Crean’s profession have been the technical improvements he delivered to the event of laser printer, the multifunction printer (MFP), and to what Freedman says was the primary B2-format digital press (a undertaking for the U.S. Military).
Freedman additionally cites Crean’s pioneering work in accelerating knowledge flows for enhanced press imaging speeds; and devising new methods to measure and talk about coloration printing.
“Above the Basic Individual”
Dundas remembers the ability of Crean’s mind as he pushed the restrict of digital print efficiency at Picture Take a look at Labs.
He was “an individual above the overall individual,” Dundas stated. “When you knew Pete, you’ll be amazed on the measurement of the mind he had. He got here throughout as realizing all the pieces, like an Encyclopedia Britannica with out the ebook.”
Freedman believes that Crean’s spirit and accomplishments will be appreciated to today in each exposition of digital print expertise the business places on.
“Every little thing you see once you stroll throughout that present, he’s inside these packing containers,” Freedman stated.