Photocopiers For Your Business
The photocopier has been an integral part of office operations almost since its invention. And the office copier has been around for a lot longer than most people realise.
In fact, the very first commercially used office copier was invented all the way back in 1779, by the same man who invented the improved steam engine, James Watt.
Photo copiers have come a very long way since then, but the principle has always remained the same: Making copies of documents quickly and easily. The modern photocopy machine does it in a different way than the original copiers and later photostat machines did, but it’s still doing the same thing.
The Modern Photocopier Machine
Despite the availability of various types of copiers, buying and using them continued to be an expensive undertaking for a very long time. It wasn’t until the invention of the electrophotographic process that they became cost effective enough to become widespread.
In 1947, a small, US-based company called Haloid approached the organisation responsible for refining this method, and purchased a license to develop a machine using this technology. Haloid was of the opinion that electrophotography was too complicated a name to use in marketing, so they and the inventor agreed to rename it xerography, Greek for “dry writing.”
And so, the first Xerox copier was born. 60 years later, the name has become ubiquitous as a synonym for photocopying, and Xerox is one of the few companies who’ve had their brand name become a verb. (Others are Hoover and Google of course.)
It’s also interesting to note that Xerox wishes that it wasn’t a verb. It might have something to do with the fact that Xerox photocopiers are only a small part of the market, with brands like Canon, Panasonic, Nashua and Konika copiers dominating the copier machine market. Whatever the real reason though, the fact remains that Xerox asks dictionaries that include “xerox” as a synonym for photocopying to remove it.
Colour Copiers
The next big step forward for office photocopying was the color copier. Colour toner was already available in the 1950’s, but it wasn’t until the late 60’s that it became commercially available. Colour copiers, as the name suggests, make photocopies of documents or images in colour, and they immediately became a concern to governments when enterprising criminals started making colour copies of money.
These days, it’s less of an issue thanks to security measures on bank notes that were specifically designed to prevent counterfeiting by colour copy, but which have since been expanded to make it harder to counterfeit money by any means.
Digital Copiers & The Information Age
The digital age ushered in entirely new generations of photocopiers. With the increase in office automation, copier companies strove to maintain their relevance in the face of what everybody assumed would be the paperless office. Of course, as we all know, the paperless office is anything but. And there are even people who think that the photocopier was responsible for the failure of the paperless office.
Nonetheless, companies leapt to the challenge, rapidly producing multifunction copiers that scanned, printed, emailed and even shared copied documents over a network.
Digital photocopiers have moved away from the old electrostatic technology, and these days simply incorporate a high-speed scanner and laser printer, which scans the document and then prints it out. There are numerous advantages to digital photocopying, including image enhancement and collation, and as a result, digital copiers like the Canon multifunction remain not only popular, but useful as well.
The Future Of Photocopy Machines
Despite the ever-growing reliance on, and demand for, the digital technology that should render photocopiers unnecessary, there are still countless applications for which they’re not only suitable, but useful for.
The humble office photocopier will maintain a place in businesses for a long time to come. And with their increasing integration into digital communication, their roles are likely to keep expanding as well.
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