Industry Notes Passing of Peter Crean, Digital Printing Pioneer
Patrick Henry appears again on the lifetime of Xerox’s Peter Crean, one of many graphic communications trade’s most groundbreaking technologists, who handed away final month.
Peter Crean (heart) with colleagues Henry Freedman (Picture Check Labs), Peter Dundas (Picture Check Labs), Robert Eller (Rochester Institute of Expertise), and Eric Zeise (Picture Check Labs).
The graphic communications trade misplaced one in every 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 loss of life 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 many years, he developed or co-developed most of the applied sciences that grew to become the constructing blocks of digital printing and imaging because it exists at this time.
In 1970, for instance, he was one in every of three members of an engineering group that produced the primary laser printer. Originally 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 basic 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 colour printing system
- Strategies to manage look of gloss ranges for printed textual content and pictures
- Web page parallel raster picture processing
- Minimizing spectrophotometer affect on spot colour accuracy
- Web page parallel RIP with interleaved chunks
- Pipelined structure for patterned halftone era
- Inkjet printer droplet top sensing management
Improvements Below the Hood
Crean and different Xerox researchers discovered a solution to run imaging and compression algorithms for variable printing on high-performance video chips—an utility that yielded greater 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 study 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 a long-lasting affect on Xerox.”
“I liked working with him,” recalled Frank Steenburgh, the Xerox gross sales govt who led the market launches of the DocuTech and the iGen3. Each time technical questions arose, “he at all times both understood or came upon and bought again to me. He might talk. I trusted him.”
A selected present of Crean’s, stated Steenburgh, was his means to translate expertise from the lab into real-world functions “in a product that was prepared for the market.” He’s remembered at Xerox as one of many first engineers to include gross sales group 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 skilled in imaging and print sciences, Dr. Peter Dundas, a former principal colour scientist for Xerox, and Eric Zeise, a analysis scientist for Eastman Kodak, in Expertise Watch–Picture Check Labs, a developer of picture and colour measurement instruments for print functions.
There, he was a part of a venture that for the primary time measured the flexibility of digital printing to match, and even exceed, the standard of offset lithography all through a print run. In 2017, the Picture Check Labs group obtained an InterTech Expertise 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 Expertise 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 trade.
In accordance with Freedman, the highest three “basic sport changers” of Crean’s profession have been the technical improvements he dropped at the event of laser printer, the multifunction printer (MFP), and to what Freedman says was the primary B2-format digital press (a venture for the U.S. Military).
Freedman additionally cites Crean’s pioneering work in accelerating information flows for enhanced press imaging speeds; and devising new methods to measure and talk about colour printing.
“Above the Common Individual”
Dundas remembers the facility of Crean’s mind as he pushed the restrict of digital print efficiency at Picture Check Labs.
He was “an individual above the final particular person,” Dundas stated. “If you happen to knew Pete, you’ll be amazed on the dimension of the mind he had. He got here throughout as understanding the whole lot, like an Encyclopedia Britannica with out the guide.”
Freedman believes that Crean’s spirit and accomplishments may be appreciated to at the present time in each exposition of digital print expertise the trade places on.
“All the things you see once you stroll throughout that present, he’s inside these containers,” Freedman stated.