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Steven J. Harrington’s 5,600 square-foot house was built in 1860. A house that old naturally needs renovations. That’s one of the things Harrington liked about it. “My major hobby is building construction,” he says. “I’ve been remodeling houses forever. I’m not afraid to try most any kind of construction job.” In his spare time, Harrington has improved the site’s exterior as well by building another 2,500 square feet in porch and garage additions.
Harrington’s affinity for construction also serves him at work, where he expands and improves on the world of document design. Recently, he became only the 14th scientist employed by Xerox Corp. to be awarded 100 patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The 100th patent (No. 7,092,551) is titled “System and Method for Measuring and Quantizing Document Quality.” In other words, Harrington and a team of researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology have established a method for measuring whether a document’s design is good. “What we drew on were things like manuals for design, which give rules for people to use in evaluating some of these things. But trying to quantify them and apply them is new,” he says. The system measures a variety of parameters, including ease of use, aesthetics, eye-catching ability, interest, communicability, comfort, readability, locateability and convenience of the document. The document also measures things that contribute to those parameters, such as page numbers and labels.
Xerox commemorated Harrington’s milestone with a ceremony and plaque, which was added to a wall honoring the company’s other scientists who acquired 100-plus patents. He and his wife went to dinner, but that’s it. “There’s a little more fuss than is needed,” he says. “I think inventing is kind of easy, and people do it all the time. Anytime you’re solving a problem, you’re inventing a solution to the problem. You can patent it if you’re the first one to solve the problem.” The invention Harrington admires most is the Phillips head screwdriver. “It’s such a simple, elegant solution,” he says. “Without it, we wouldn’t have automated assembly.”
Submitting invention proposals has become routine for Harrington. In fact, it’s essentially inseparable from the work itself. “The invention proposal process becomes part of documenting your work, and it has the nice side effect of creating intellectual property for Xerox,” he says. Even when he’s not working on something specific, Harrington keeps track of ideas that might turn into an invention. “Sometimes late on a Friday afternoon, when your head starts to buzz, you get together with other people and come up with some wild ideas,” he says.
Of the 111 patents Harrington currently holds, his favorite is one that improved the process for printing halftones. “The problem was, when you were doing full-color halftones, you had to decide where to put the dots, and you want to end up with a nice full distribution,” he says. His invention dispensed with traditional techniques and offered a way to determine the amount of ink to use and then the colors. “When I started out in digital imaging, I was familiar with the area, and it was easier to come up with something valuable and new,” he says. “But I got bored with that.”
—Andy Brown
