Regarded by many as the "father" of industrial design education, he was born in Persia (Iran) as Alexander Jusserand Kostellow. He studied in Paris and the University of Berlin.

The Secretary, a copying machine, designed by Samuel M. Highberger, 32, of Harley Earl, Inc. for 3M Co.,Thermo-Fax Division, was introduced by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) in 1958. The product was awarded one of three National Awards and Medals annually by the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI) in 1958. Highberger was the youngest designer to ever receive the award for "Excellence in product design." Samuel Highberger, IDSA (b. 1926). A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in 1949, Sam worked from 1950 to 1959 for Sundberg & Ferar in Detroit, MI. In 1965, his design for the Clark Equipment Co.,"Cortez" motorhome, was chosen for the London, England ,"Design in America" exhibit. From 1959 to 1985, he was Product Design Director for Ford & Earl Design Associates in Warren, MI. Following that, Sam led his own consulting business, Highberger Design, in Birmingham, MI. In 1968-69, his Massey-Ferguson MF350 Hydraulic Excavator was selected the "Best Engineered Industrial Product" by the American Iron & Steel Institute. He won the same award in 1972-73 for the Lorain Div. of Koehring Co.'s MC-75H hydraulic truck crane. In 1969, his 3M Company Filmac 400 Microfilm Reader/Printer was included in IDSA's "Design in America" book. And in 1977, four of his Massey Ferguson Construction Machinery machines and the Lorain 75H Mobile Truck Crane were selected as the "Best Product Designs of the last 10 years" for the "Design in Michigan" exhibit in Detroit. After leaving Ford & Earl Associates in 1985, Sam continued his consultant work in Birmingham, MI as Hi Design Inc. until his retirement to Hendersonville, NC.

The first automatic office copier to make copies on plain paper, the 914, is introduced by Haloid Xerox. A floor-mounted device, it was designed by James G. Balmer of Armstrong-Balmer & Associates, in collaboration with Don Shepardson, John Rutkus and Hal Bogdenoff of Xerox, who had developed an engineering prototype. Balmer had recently left Harley Earl, Inc., where he had been director since 1945, to establish Armstrong-Balmer & Associates in 1958. At Earl, Balmer had been involved in the Secretary copy machine designed for Thermofax and introduced by 3M in 1958, and Haloid Xerox had been impressed with the design, engaging Balmer to consult on the final design of the 914. Xerography, a process of producing images using electricity, was invented in 1938 by physicist-lawyer Chester Floyd "Chet" Carlson (1906-1968), and an engineering friend, Otto Kornei. Carlson entered into a research agreement with the Batelle Memorial Institute in 1944, when he and Kornei produced the first operable copy machine. He sold his rights in 1947 to the Haloid Company, a wet-chemical photocopy machine manufacturer, founded in 1906 in Rochester, NY. The first commercial xerographic copier, the Xerox Model A, was introduced in 1949 by Haloid, which had the previous year announced the refined development of xerography in collaboration with Battelle Development Corporation, of Columbus, OH. Manually operated, it was also known as the Ox Box. An improved version, Camera #1, was introduced in 1950. Haloid had been re-named Haloid Xerox in 1958, and, after the instant success of the 914, when the name Xerox soon became synonymous with "copy", would become the Xerox Corporation. In 1963, Xerox introduced the first desktop copier to make copies on plain paper, the 813. It also was designed by Jim Balmer of Armstrong-Balmer & Associates, and won a 1964 Certificate of Design Merit from the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI).