The First Photocopier

As C. E. M. Joad might have said (on The Brains Trust) : it all depends what you mean by a photocopier.

On its Photocopier page, Wikipedia tells us that "Commercial xerographic office photocopying was introduced by Xerox in 1959, and it gradually replaced copies made by Verifax, Photostat, carbon paper, mimeograph machines, and other duplicating machines." On the same page, in a panel headed History of Printing, it gives 1907 as the year in which one of those machines that were replaced by xerographic photocopying – the Photostat – was introduced.

Significantly, it seems to me, Wikipedia doesn't include the xerographic photocopier in its History of Printing panel (which is also included on several other pages). This implies that the Photostat is a printing machine, while the xerox machine is not.

So is the Photostat a photocopier? Well on its Photostat Machine page, Wikipedia does describe the Photostat as "an early projection photocopier". So maybe it is.

Another of those earlier types of duplicating machine – the Mimeograph – was introduced (according to Wikipedia) in the 1880s, and "gradually displaced by photocopying." And which page does Wikipedia link "photocopying" to? You guessed it: the xerox machine – introduced in the 1950s – and not the Photostat.

This question (about when the first photocopier was marketed) is clearly open to interpretation, and seems deliberately designed to catch out the unwary. Obviously I can't speak authoritatively for anyone but myself, but I would suggest that most people, when asked about a photocopier, would think of the xerox machine that we are all familiar with today (and have been for the last fifty years or so – if we're that old).

If the setter was asking about the Photostat machine (which they were), they should have said so (IMHO).