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People with traditional paper -based office processes still think in terms of copiers but at a technical level they are obsolete. Things which look like copiers are actually scanner-printers - which is why they usually have a USB or ethernet port for optional computer connection as well.
Photocopiers had to be big machines to make them economical. Today's scanner-printer based machines are far more flexible - and much cheaper. Inkjet printers need a processor, memory and a USB connection to the local computer anyway and sticking a scanner on top doesn't add much to the cost. Adding a scanner and creating a multifunction copier potentially increases user enjoyment and use of cartridges, which is where the manufacturer makes money.
Sub £100 machines like the Brother DCP-7010, Lexmark X2350 and HP PSC1610 can do a great little job as a personal copier and there are some that can double as fax machines as well.
More demanding office work can use the Brother MFC-9420CN, HP Laserjet 3055 or 4730 which are laser printer based or the Xerox C2424 phaser. These are faster and the consumables are likely to be more economical.
What Killed Copiers?
Printing has generally been moving to the user - and away from big central machines. That doesn't mean there is no call for datacentre and workgroup printers and copiers any more but there is a definite move to put things on the individuals desk.
There are various arguments in favour of this.
It fits with computer networks. If a user has permission to see information on the screen they can print it on their local printer and esponsibility for protecting the information and for the cost of printing falls to them. Network printers and copiers are more difficult to administer - quite who is doing what with them is less clear. Network printers can spool copies to a supervisor and have lockable collection trays. Why bother when every user can have a printer?
It's less disruptive. Office tradition was that the junior clerk gets sent to the copier. This disguises the fact that the boss doesn't know how to work the copier. Today's work methods generally have flatter heirarchies and more technically informed bosses.
Paperwork ought to be on it's way out. Paper is a good way to handle complicated information but brief transactions really ought to be possible on a screen. Paperwork certainly hasn't gone away but the need to make duplicates is dropping.
Copiers were the logical accompaniement to typewriters. With a laser printed document it's easier to ask for half a dozen copies is that is what is wanted.
The big change was introduction of the laser printer, which is based on the photocopier mechanism. From the early 1980s onwards the price of laser printers fell so that first the office had one shared, then several for different jobs, and maybe even a printer each.
Copiers began to lose role - a copy of a document was just a matter of changing the word processor print-run to "2". Hewlett Packard tried to popularise the term "Mopier" - "Multiple Original Printer".
Now there is a new wave of technically based change.
One aspect is the ability to use inkjets, phasers and cheap lasers as print engines. These mechanisms have been around for a while but the computer power and memory to scan and reproduce a page were expensive. Costs of support circuitry and software have now fallen to levels where they don't pose much of a problem.
Economics of production change in turn. It costs a lot to develop and tool up for making any sort of print engine. Costs look much less problematic shared across several million sales than across a few hundred thousand so the small, cheap, general purpose mass market device gets an advantage over the big, expensive specialist machine.
Where Now
Copiers aren't dead just different. Office paperwork now implies there's something wrong with the computer systems - the process ought to be electronic. People don't make a copy of a report, they e-mail it. Copiers are an aspect of the computer system rather than stand-alone machines.
People who want to read a long document still print it - looking at a printed page is easier on the eyes and brain than dealing with a screen. Bookshops aren't complaining that ebooks have grabbed the market (yet) and unless there is a huge improvement in the quality and cost of screens they won't be doing so soon.
High speed digital printers are becomming increasingly practical workhorses in printworks.
Technical Development.
Laser-print developed out of photo-copying. Electrostatic printing can correctly be called "xerography" - it was a Xerox patented dry copying process invented by Chester Carlson and a huge business success in the 1960s. Xerox experimented with several kinds of computer printer. Laser printers were first built by Xerox Parc researcher Gary Starkweather modifying a high speed copier - the machine needed to be fast to justify all the computer support it needed.
Photocopiers light the source document brightly and then use mirrors and lenses to focus a thin line from the image directly onto the photostatic drum. Photocopier mechanisms tended to be quite elaborate. Using optics to accurately focus an image of a document onto a surface is not easy
Xerox not only held the patents to the electrostatic imaging process, but a bit later patented the mirror focussing mechanism. Photocopying became a huge industry, with several rival manufacturers particualrly among the Japanese optical companies.
Photo-copiers often look complex - they are generally physically bulky and have a collection of input and output trays. The bulk of a typical copier is down to a big mechanism designed for lasting reliability in the days when technical change was slow. Since printed documents didn't change much it looked like copiers might last 20 years.
A typical older photocopier has a microprocessor system but this doesn't do much. The microprocessor handles input from the control panel and then sequences the operation of motors and clutches that control the machine. The image is handled optically.
It is nevertheless possible for a copier to do some sophisticated things. Enlarging and reducing from A4 to A3 and vice versa can be done quickly and purely optically - so there aren't the scaling problems given by bitmaps. By selectively turning off the eraser a copier can store one image then cut and paste parts of others.
Some of the early laser printers had an optical forms overlay capability so the outline for an electricty bill could be loaded as a transparency and projected at the same time as the laser filled in the details from computer data.
Tricks like this were clever and got round the need for lots of memory to handle graphical images.
The problem with a photocopier is to tell it how to do sophisticated things. The control panel is often a mass of buttons, coloured lights and LCD display screens. Most of these controls aren't needed on a computer printer, because the control-panel can be a Windows computer program - or better still a Web page. In fact all the apparent sophistication of the copier hides a problem - the copier doesn't have a decent screen. With a decent screen control over working doesn't have to rely on a lot of obscure button presses. Like a lot of technology, copiers sold on features but all most users can be bothered with is to press the big green button.
Copiers were king when the typist was queen. Twenty years ago when offices were ruled by typists the copier was the only way to duplicate a document - other than
- carbon paper which gave rather dismal results.
- the "dyeline" process using liquid ammonia - only used for engineering diagrams.
- and wax stencils - the schoolmaster's friend.
For a while in the 1980s some photocopier manufacturers sidestepped Xerox's mirror mechanism patent by making copiers that scanned by sliding a glass plate backwards and forwards. Eventually most of the core patents exired.
In the late 1980s the word processor and then the full-blown desktop computer began to completely outclass the combination of typewriter and copier. Various kinds of printer were tried - golfballs and daisy wheels produced nice print slowly. Dot matrix printers generally struggled with "letter quality" print but were fairly fast. The laser printer became the standard way to handle correspondence.
Laser printers, which originated as modified copiers, now began to displace the parent technology. Where a typewriter gave real use for a copier a computer printer could be asked to produce five or ten copies of a report - bypassing the need for copying.
Scanner - Printers
In fact copier makers themselves found that the optical path was a source of problems - dust on the optics and juddering in the mirror mechanisms causing problems. It was simpler to build a copier that was entirely based around a laser printer with a scanner on top. One big advanatge was that this kind of device could be sold - or rented - as both a copier and a high speed network printer.
One problem is that ideas like this have proved so popular that reasonably well specified print-scan-copy-fax combinations are available for well under £500. This kind of machine obviously undercuts traditional copiers that were more typically ten or twenty times the price.
Some of these new low cost scanner - printers do have masses of buttons, lights and LCD displays because the machine doubles as copier and fax - so people expect to type the number of copies and number dialled into the panel. (Of course the thing ought to have looked up the phone number in LDAP). Given the falling price of LCD screens and PC processor power it can't be long before someone thinks it worthwhile to put a whole PC inside the printer.
Today almost all photocopiers are actually scanner-printer combinations. The scanner mechanism is easier to make than the complex optics in a copier and the computer heart of the machine can do things like despeckling an image or producing a dithered greyscale that a pure copier could not achieve.
Photocopying itself is a continuing but diminishing need. It's one of several bridges between the world of information on paper and the rather different realm of the network and Internet. On the whole paper still manages to be more interesting and informative - newspapers, magazine articles and books with their authors and editors tend to be more authoritative than the Internet's blogs and bulletin boards. People still tend to copy ather than simply scan - although scanning is increasingly popular. One problem with scanning is to name the file, put it in an appropriate folder, then find it again later. If it were OCR'd things might be easier but that's an extra stage. Software to scan and file in one easy action doesn't live up to its promise yet. People copy things because it's easy to keep them in a heap for a day or so.
There will always be some need for big fast printers. The problem is that with ordinary desktop printers producing duplex colour pages at 16ppm its only a big workgroup or an extraordinary print job that needs anything faster. Of course there can be a heirarchy of printers - personal, workgroup, departmental and enterprise class machines. Using the Internet copy-shops can give everyone access to the top-tiers.
There is still a role for special machines. At the moment ordinary printers can't do things like booklet collation binding and stapling. The laser printer chucks out nicely printed colour pages quickly enough. Turning pages into something presentable needs a three-hole punch and a ring binder, spiral binders or thermal binders - all of them clumsy. So there is a role for machinery that can turn documents into books.
It rather looks as though the traditional workplace party game of photocopying unlikely anatomical features will be doomed - desktop scanners just aren't up to the job. And if the office copier is inclined to cover and staple anything that comes near it - !