Harrington, a scientist in the Xerox Innovation Group who received three patents within days of each other last month, is the 14th Xerox scientist to be awarded 100 patents. His 100th US patent.
Patent No.7,092,551 – is titled ’System and method for measuring and quantising document quality’.
It is one of seven patents he filed related to the fundamental understanding of what makes images and layout appealing.
Working with scientists from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Centre for Electronic Imaging Systems, Harrington, a Xerox Fellow, discovered ways to objectively judge what have been subjective issues until now, such as the properties that make documents look better or worse, easier or more difficult to understand, eye-catching or dull, said the company.
He continues to invent and has applied for a dozen more patents, including several innovations that result in smarter documents, says Xerox.
Among them are methods for encoding invisible electronic information in a printed document, for internet coupon fraud deterrence and for creating and using multi-versioned documents.
Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox’s chief technology officer and president of the Xerox Innovation Group, says: ’Steve has the rare ability to find new ways of approaching challenges. His inventions have ranged from digital watermarking and inkjet printer technologies to highlight colour mapping and a method for correcting colour in a compressed image.
“His discoveries have enriched Xerox products and services and have influenced the state of the art in imaging.’”
Fascinated by robots and Tinker Toys when he was a child in Portland, Oregan (USA) Harrington, 58, is said to be happiest when he is being challenged by new problems.
“One of the reasons I find research at Xerox so satisfying is that I am constantly learning new stuff.”
Harrington is currently working in Xerox’s adaptive and smart document systems laboratory, where he is investigating what can happen when electronic devices ’talk’ to each other.
He has also worked on symbolic computation, taught computer science and developed page description languages and methods for highlighting colour printing, image rendering, half toning, colour mapping and video image processing. He joined Xerox in 1981 after two years teaching at the State University of New York.
