Power, Eugene B., 1905-1993

Founder and director of University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and member of the board of regents of the University of Michigan.

Founder and executive of University Microforms, which merged with Xerox Corporation in 1962; director of Xerox Corporation, 1962-1968; regent of the University of Michigan, 1956-1966.

Eugene Barnum Power was born in 1905 in Traverse City, Michigan. He received his BA in 1927 and his MBA in 1930, both from the University of Michigan. In 1929 he married the former Sadye L. Harwick and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his son, Philip H., was born in 1938.

Eugene Power was an entrepreneur with many and widely varied interests. He was a founder of the modern microfilm industry and a pioneer in the information revolution. A public servant, he was a regent of the University of Michigan and member of the council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. As a philanthropist, he founded the Power Foundation and established the Power Exchange Scholarships.

Eugene Power early in his career began investigating methods of reproducing and distributing research materials. He became convinced that the just-emerging technology of textual microphotography was the ideal medium for making widely available the treasures of the world's libraries. In 1938, he founded University Microfilms, Inc. and began a series of inventions and projects that would make microfilm research an everyday part of the scholar's life. He first arranged to have photographed all British books printed before 1640 with a microfilm camera that he invented. Positive copies of these films he then sold to research libraries. He next applied the technology of microfilm to the publication of doctoral dissertations. These dissertations then became available on film, Xerographic copy or larger offset printed editions. Other projects followed: the microfilming of newspaper and periodical files and the filming of manuscript and other unique materials.

Eugene Power was a proponent of the idea of "editions of one." He believed it was possible and profitable to produce in editions of any size any textual material in existence. Power realized that if a book or any other text in print could be photographed and stored in microfilm form, it could then be reproduced, on demand, in editions as low as one.

In 1959, Power realized that Xerography could be linked as a printing technique to materials preserved in microfilm form. He helped to develop a Xerox copier that worked directly from microfilm negatives, thereby achieving a printed form of his editions of one. This association with Xerox led in 1962 to the merger of University Microfilms into the Xerox Corporation. Power served on the Xerox board of directors until 1968. In 1970, he retired from the company because of its mandatory retirement age of 65.

Power had many interests beyond the business world. Concerned about the state of American college education, Power was twice elected to the board of regents of the University of Michigan (1955-1966). He was a member of the Association of College Governing Boards (president, 1970-71). In addition, he was a member of the governing boards of Carleton College, St. John's University, and the Interlochen Music School.

After his retirement, Power devoted most of his energies toward philanthropic concerns. In 1967, he established the Power Foundation and out of it came a series of initiatives that included the Power Exchange Scholarships, support for such causes as population control and the work of Planned Parenthood, and the development and construction of the Power Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Michigan. Eugene Power never really retired, always taking on new interests and responsibilities. He helped to found Eskimo Art, Inc., a non-profit corporation which first introduced the art of the Inuit of the Canadian northeast to the American market. He made numerous photographic safaris of wild game; he was chairman and principal motivator of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival; and he served on numerous boards of directors: Domino's Pizza, Daedalus Enterprises, and ERIM (Environmental Research Institute of Michigan).

Eugene Power died on December 7, 1993.