Photocopier a convergence in some high-end machines between the roles of a photocopier, a fax machine, a scanner, and a computer network-connected printer into a multi-function printer. Lower-end machines that can copy and print in color have increasingly dominated the home-office market as their prices fell steadily through 2017. Higher-end color photocopiers capable of handling heavy duty cycles and large-format printing remain a costlier specialty for print and design shops. Chester Carlson, the inventor of photocopying, was originally a patent attorney, as well as a part-time researcher and inventor. His job at the patent office in New York required him to
Laser printing of the medium across the printer's photoreceptor. This enables laser printing to copy images more quickly than most photocopiers. Invented at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, laser printers were introduced for the office and then home markets in subsequent years by IBM, Canon, Xerox, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and many others. Over the decades, quality and speed have increased as price has fallen, and the once cutting-edge printing devices are now ubiquitous. In the 1960s, the Xerox Corporation held a dominant position in the photocopier market. In 1969, Gary Starkweather, who worked in Xerox's product development department, had the idea of using