In the mid-s, Xerox introduced the "Xerox Duplicating System". Originally designed to be sold to print shops to increase their productivity, it was twice a fast as the duplicator at two impressions per second ( per hour). It was followed by the , which did auto-duplexing, and then by the , which was which added variable zoom reduction and electronic lightness/darkness control.

Meanwhile, a small lab team was borrowing copiers and modifying them. The lab was developing what it called long distance xerography (LDX) to connect a modified copier to a CRT based scanner using a special service (TELPAK) of the public telephone network, so that a document scanned on one machine would print out on the other. The LDX system was introduced in , followed in by the Magnafax Telecopier, a much smaller, slower and less expensive version that acoustically coupled to a desk phone. However,

The was followed by the first automatic xerographic printer, the Copyflo, in . The Copyflo was a large microfilm printer that could produce positive prints on roll paper from any type of microfilm negative. Following the Copyflo, the process was scaled down to produce the microfilm printer. At about half the size and weight, this still sizable machine printed onto hand-fed, cut-sheet paper which was pulled through the process by one of two gripper bars. A scaled-down version of this gripper feed system was to become the basis for the desktop copier.