Product Code Database
A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process that uses electrostatic charges on a light-sensitive photoreceptor to first attract and then transfer toner particles (a powder) onto paper in the form of an image. The toner is then fused onto the paper using heat, pressure, or a combination of both. Copiers can also use other technologies, such as inkjet printer, but xerography is standard for office copying.
Commercial xerographic office photocopying gradually replaced copies made by Verifax copier, photostat, carbon paper, mimeograph machines, and other duplicating machines.
Photocopying is widely used in the business, education, and government sectors. While there have been predictions that photocopiers will eventually become obsolete as information workers increase their use of digital document creation, storage, and distribution and rely less on distributing actual pieces of paper, as of 2015, photocopiers continue to be widely used. During the 1980s, a convergence began in some high-end machines towards what came to be called a multi-function printer: a device that combined the roles of a photocopier, a fax machine, a Image scanner, and a computer network-connected printer. Low-end machines that can copy and print in color have increasingly dominated the home-office market as their prices fell steadily during the 1990s. High-end color photocopiers capable of heavy-duty handling cycles and large-format printing remain a costly option found primarily in print and design shops.
In 1944, the Battelle Memorial Institute, a non-profit organization in Columbus, Ohio, contracted with Carlson to refine his new process. Over the next five years, the institute conducted experiments to improve the process of electrophotography. In 1947, Haloid Corporation, a manufacturer of photographic paper, approached Battelle to obtain a license to develop and market a copying machine based on this technology.
Haloid felt that the word "electrophotography" was too complicated and did not have good Brand awareness value. After consulting a professor of classical language at Ohio State University, Haloid and Carlson changed the name of the process to xerography, a term, coined from Greek language roots, that meant "dry writing." Haloid called the new copier machines "Xerox Machines" and, in 1948, the term Xerox was trademarked. Haloid eventually became Xerox Corporation in 1961.
In 1949, Xerox Corporation introduced the first xerographic copier, called the Model A. Seeing off computing-leader [[IBM]] in the office-copying market, Xerox became so successful that, in North America, photocopying came to be popularly known as "xeroxing". Xerox has actively fought to prevent ''Xerox'' from becoming a genericized trademark. While the word ''Xerox'' has appeared in some dictionaries as a synonym for photocopying, - generic use recorded from 1966 onward.Xerox Corporation typically requests such entries be modified, and discourages use of the term Xerox in this way.
In the early 1950s, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) introduced a variation on the process called Electrofax, whereby images are formed directly on specially coated paper and rendered with a toner dispersed in a liquid.
During the 1960s and through the 1980s, Savin Corporation developed and sold a line of liquid-toner copiers that implemented a technology based on patents held by the company.
Before the widespread adoption of xerographic copiers, photo-direct copies produced by machines such as Kodak's Verifax copier (based on a 1947 patent) were used. A primary obstacle associated with the pre-xerographic copying technologies was the high cost of supplies: a Verifax print required supplies costing US$0.15 in 1969, while a Xerox print could be made for $0.03, including paper and labor. The coin-operated Photostat machines still found in some public libraries in the late 1960s made letter-size copies for $0.25 each, when the minimum wage for a US worker was $1.65 per hour; the Xerox machines that replaced them typically charged $0.10.
Xerographic-copier manufacturers took advantage of the high perceived value copying had in the 1960s and early 1970s and marketed "specially designed" paper for xerographic output. By the end of the 1970s, paper producers made xerographic "runability" one of the requirements for most of their office-paper .
Some devices sold as photocopiers have replaced the drum-based process with inkjet or transfer-film technology.
Among the key advantages of photocopiers over earlier copying technologies is their ability:
A significant advantage of digital copier technology is "automatic digital collation". For example, when copying a set of 20 pages 20 times, a digital copier scans each page only once, then uses the stored information to produce 20 sets. In an analog copier, either each page is scanned 20 times (a total of 400 scans), making one set at a time, or 20 separate output trays are used for the 20 sets.
Low-end copiers also use Digital data technology, but tend to consist of a standard PC scanner coupled to an inkjet or low-end laser printer, which are far slower than their counterparts in high-end copiers. However, low-end scanner-inkjets can provide color copying at a lower upfront purchase-price but a much higher cost per copy. Combined digital scanner/printers sometimes have built-in fax machines and can be classified as one type of multifunction printer.
A negative photocopy inverts the document's colors when creating a photocopy, resulting in letters that appear white on a black background instead of black on a white background. Negative photocopies of old or faded documents sometimes produce documents that have better focus and are easier to read and study.
In certain countries, such as Canada, some university pay royalties from each photocopy made at university copy machines and copy centers to copyright collectives out of the revenues from the photocopying, and these collectives distribute resulting funds to various scholarly publishers. In the United States, photocopied compilations of articles, handouts, graphics, and other information called readers often require texts for college classes. Either the instructor or the copy center is responsible for clearing copyright for every article in the reader, and attribution information must be clearly included in the reader.
Color copying also raises concerns regarding the copying and/or forging of other documents, such as driver's licenses and university degrees and transcripts. Some driver's licenses are made with embedded holograms so that a police officer can detect a fake copy. Some university and college transcripts have special anti-copying in the background. If a copy is made, the watermarks will become highly visible, which allows the recipient to determine that they have a copy rather than a genuine original transcript.
Concerns about emissions from photocopy machines have been expressed by some in connection with the use of selenium and emissions of ozone and fumes from heated toner.
Some high-quality color printers and copiers steganography embed their identification code into the printed pages, as fine and almost invisible patterns of yellow dots. Some sources identify Xerox and Canon as companies doing this. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has investigated this issue and documented how the Xerox DocuColor printer's serial number, as well as the date and time of the printout, are encoded in a repeating 8×15 dot pattern in the yellow channel. EFF is working to reverse engineer additional printers. The EFF also reports that the US government has asked these companies to implement such a tracking scheme, so that can be traced. The EFF has filed a Freedom of Information Act request in order to look into privacy implications of this tracking.
Photocopying, using liquid developer, was used in 1967.
Images from 'wet photocopying' do not last as long as dry toner images, but this is not due to acidity.
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