The Pocket Xeroxes of 1986

[@PaulMonaco]

Fun fact... Similar devices still have a place today. I had a client in the business of doing Real Estate Title searches where they'd go to "town halls" to research documents. Local ordinances prohibited the use of cameras (even cell-phone cameras) but allowed for documents to be "scanned". The idea was to force people to pay an inflated copy-fee for a hard-copy but being a municipality the law had to be written in such a way to allow the office to copy. They didn't anticipate a "pocket copier".

[@gabotron94]

What about bringing a flatbed scanner in a suitcase

[@tbuk8350]

@@gabotron94 Nah, the real power move is just to roll in a huge large format bed scanner and slowly capture the documents page-by-page.

[@wheelmanstan]

It's like going to the DMV with your birth certificate that has your literal footprints on it and official seal..but they tell you that they need to see a copy, so you pay like 20 bucks for a damn copy.

[@Fionnafire]

Please tell me where I can get one

[@badladyami]

@@wheelmanstan Hell, a certified copy from Tennessee costs eighty goddamned dollars.

[@LonSeidman]

One of the things I miss about the 80's were all of the crazy gadgets. Now we just get apps with ads.

[@pleasedontwatchthese9593]

This is true, phones have replaces most of these single use devices.

[@tookitogo]

Indeed. As a kid in the late 80s, I bought a cassette-based answering machine for school lockers. It came with special whistles to give your friends, who would stand in front of the closed locker and blow the whistle to start recording. (A rather aspirational purchase, since at the time I had neither a locker nor any friends!)

[@LonSeidman]

​@@tookitogo Was that one of those World of Wonders products?

[@tookitogo]

@@LonSeidman I honestly don’t know! I found it at a toy store at an outlet mall in South Carolina when we were stuck there a few days during a blizzard over Christmas. I think mom let me buy that crap out of pity! 🤣

[@Owyn_Merrilin]

@@JC-11111 There's a youtuber who's been restoring and preserving those in a way that's as close to the intended experience as possible. Here's an educational filmstrip he found using Scooby Doo characters: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKSZoYmLa8yti5Y

[@JessHull]

You using those tiny copiers at the end reminded me of infomercials where they're trying to show how difficult it is to do something without the product they're selling, lol.

[@zeframm]

Needs to be in black and white.

[@seanc.5310]

But wait there's more! *Get a second FREE hand copier!!!* (Just pay separate $39.95 shipping and processing fee)

[@crytocc]

This was exactly my thought!

[@ZXRulezzz]

*THERE'S GOTTA BE AN EASIER WAY!!1*

[@GMCLabs]

Those are funny, esp when its someone using a knife and it looks like they never used a knife before in their life. Like how do I slice this tomato? Do I use the side of the knife, the handle maybe, I just can't figure this thing out. lol

[@stinchjack]

"when I say I got two, I mean I got six" lol

[@ltrain_0311]

Had to give a fist pump at this part

[@acucumberisafruit]

TOASTERS?! 😍

[@Arbiter099]

Technology Connections vibes

[@tutorsurrey]

hey. could you do a thing on modern cheap Kid's cameras which use heat paper. They seem a good alternative to expensive polarold.

[@anthonyfn]

Sounds like my gf

[@chikinfrydsteak]

I'm impressed by the PortaCopy. It's a phenomenally elegant design. It's "dumbness" is part of it's design genius, and probably explains why it still works so well nearly 40 years later

[@Garbaz]

2:50 That demo looks like a magic trick! Now I want a device like that Also the sheer simplicity of feeding the output of a linear CCD into a thermal printer is just really cool.

[@rpavlik1]

That's just so nifty to see that little receipt printer spitting out paper at the same speed you drag it. Red LEDs were a lot cheaper and more reliable/established back then, I think.

[@nrdesign1991]

Probably also brighter, and filterless CCD's are more sensitive to red light

[@tookitogo]

In the 80s, LEDs were a mature technology in red, green (the yellowish green, not the emerald green we have today), and everything in between (hence the various shades of yellow, amber, and orange LEDs). Blue was still being developed (costing dozens of dollars a piece for extremely dim output), and white LEDs (which are bright blue LEDs with yellow phosphor on top) hadn’t even been envisioned. My hunch is that they initially chose red because they were the relatively brightest: not only are CCDs more sensitive to red as mentioned in the previous reply, but bear in mind that human vision is most sensitive to green, so to get a red LED of equivalent _perceived_ brightness (to the human eye) meant the red LED would actually need to emit more light than the green one. Thus, my suspicion is that red LEDs were actually more powerful, and ultimately gave the most image sensitivity per milliwatt of illuminator power. (Red LEDs also require the lowest voltages of any visible light LEDs. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the voltage, generally speaking.)

[@2.7petabytes]

I found the Sony version at a thrift store. The interesting thing was it still worked like a champ! This has been a decade or more ago and I have no idea what I did with it… Excellent video! I really enjoy all of the info you provide. Keep it up!

[@lucasrem1870]

we used hand scanner for that in 1986! cheap! i used the Genius, $50? Why print in in the museum?

[@claw_md]

strong “there’s GOT to be a better way!” vibes toward the end of this video

[@topfacemod]

This channel should really be called Passion of a Cathode Ray Dude. The thought and creative acumen involved inspire me. I know I been commenting a lot, but I am a fan. Instant like!

[@CaptainApathetic]

Yea I love the passion he has for the stuff he talks about Big thanks to Technology Connections to sharing this channel

[@Dee_Just_Dee]

I just started watching CRD a few days ago and I've fallen in love with the channel already.

[@AMacProOwner]

The weird stuff that existed for people to make “business” happen while on the go is amazing. This market is surprisingly innovative since it all just seemed to need a single reason to exist and since it’s “business” pricing was incredibly lucrative.

[@timotheatae]

"Of course when I say one, I mean I have two, and of course when I say I have two I mean I have six." Sounds like me with Joy-Con controllers.

[@claudiodiaz9752]

I'm sure this didn't exist in the universe I'm originally from.

[@uiopuiop3472]

you have also changed dimensions sir. which deriverative

[@supernoob17]

this channel is quickly shooting up the charts for best tech channel to chill out and smoke a bowl to

[@lurkersmith810]

As a former Xerox Corporation employee, I was disappointed to see not any Xerox products in your video. Also, they had us brainwashed so much about their brand protection, that 33 years after leaving the company I still bristle at people calling generic copiers "Xeroxes". (The worst was when someone told me they had a "Kodak Xerox" meaning a Kodak copier. Also, I am surprised Xerox didn't actually have one of those, but if they had I probably would have known about it then. I used to work on the big Xerox machines that were called duplicators. (Google Xerox 9200, 9400, 9900...) Otherwise, a good bed-time video!

[@greggv8]

How about when Xerox worked with the CIA to put cameras inside copiers sold to the USSR? While it was difficult for government people from outside the Soviet Union to get inside, they had an open door for the servicemen from Xerox, who were all really CIA agents trained by Xerox. In addition to servicing the copiers, adding toner etc, they'd remove the images taken by the camera then carry them out without being searched.

[@genius1a]

That is an interesting comment, that got me remembering some other cool ancient tech of the 1985 Era: I think it was a SHARP copier (I'm not sure - some short Japanese sounding name) that used extremely high pressure drums, rolling the powder on normal paper instead of high temperature (like Xerox does). But the nifty thing was: It had a pad on the top of the original Sheet lid with a stylus, where you could define Vector enclosed areas to leave out from copying. Not too easy, because the Lid was opaque and so you had to guess where to set the points. In Addition you could have one out of three different powders, one each time of copying, just by the press of a foil button: black, white, red, silver that I had actually used and some more I don't know. In combination with the defined area, you could have fancy effects by a multi pass operation. But I was a kid at the time ... For me the killer feature was the red color ... I made hundreds of red 500 Dollar Notes for Playing Monopoly. You can imagine what sums we could gather, while playing for several hours... My father, who had bought it for his company loved the features, but had to give it up after a few years for the cost of mainenance and materials I think. They had rather high B/W copying volumes and so operating cost mattered.

[@Steets]

1:20 "Through the power of buying two of them..."

[@AliceC993]

All that's missing is a plug for _Menaaaaaards_

[@sisconhimejoshi]

@@AliceC993 i know retro tech channels rarely do collabs but i really wish those two collab one day

[@KarlHamilton]

​@@sisconhimejoshi some day...

[@nickb9470]

Despite all the advances in modern technology photocopying still feels like magic to me. Imagine the millennia of only being to reproduce an existing work by hand and now we can just push a button and get an exact copy.

[@chistinelane]

I can't wait for 3d copying to become a thing. Oh what's that? You broke this plastic thing? Simply lightly glue it back together, throw it on the 3d scanner and print a new one! We already have all the pieces of this, and many people do it.... But I don't think anyone has put it together in a convenient push button package yet.

[@null_carrier]

Visible improvements in research, presentation, and editing - salute.

[@Definitelynotacelebrity]

I couldn’t imagine being the seller on eBay and seeing that one of those thing finally sold. “ Quick! Dust that thing off, pack it up, and mark it as shipped before they realize what they bought!”

[@Chrystair]

Life is funny. I just saw that movie 2 days ago and was also intrigued by this machine, wanting to know all about it and here you are making a video about it on your channel that I discovered a month prior or so.

[@MrBratkenSolov]

i like such coincidences too

[@ferociousgumby]

It's so weird that he was just holding the document in his hand, not even on a flat surface!

[@bloodypommelstudios7144]

I suspect for the film they used a prop rather than dealing with the unreliability of the technology. Preprint the document, roll it inside the device and detach the power to the heating element so it'll guarantee to roll out looking good.

[@saikothesergal]

*Thermal prints 1980's Hentai and tapes it to my friends car*

[@walkingcontradiction223]

That was you!? I got fired over that shenanigan... Thanks!

[@hammondeggsmusic]

Hah was just about to comment “I had one of those except it used some sort of wand instead” - and sure enough, there it is! Forgot all about that thing..!

[@kai990]

I just thought "imagine if you scanned your cellphone number to put it on your car's windscreen, but then the sun would blank it out and youd get towed", it took me until 21:58 to notice my mistake.

[@mjfan653]

the videos just keep getting better.... always love good retro tech, especially photo/video stuff, so if you have any ideas brewing in that category, please dont hold back! and I just love the things engineers managed to do with thermal paper... esp this thing

[@nickwallette6201]

I'm amazed at how well thermal printing works. The idea of switching on and off sources of heat so quickly that you get distinct edges in thermally-sensitive paper is just astounding. I know the elements don't have much thermal mass, but still, I can't believe it isn't a huge smeary mess.

[@aarocka11]

If LGR and technology connections had a baby that would be your channel

[@jackkraken3888]

I was thinking the same thing! 😂

[@fallingwater]

0:15 sweet music to my ears, bringing me back to simpler times when I didn't immediately switch off all sounds as my first action after a Windows reinstall. *sigh*

[@stiltongruyere9691]

Dude, your videos (especially your editing) have really been improving lately! Nice.

[@captainsunshine918]

You produce the most interesting videos I never thought I needed to watch. 😎

[@atari2600b]

I've been painting the windows 95 start menu & let me tell you it is HARD to mix explorer.exe palette. It's not just grey, it's off-blue grey. It's not just blue, it's bluegreendarkish deeply saturated blue

[@kaitlyn__L]

Greys are famously finicky to mix :D

[@Fopenplop]

like a genuine Rothko, the genius is in the subtlety

[@atari2600b]

Yeah I won't have none of that, I sat on it for these 2 weeks & I'm still not done with the underpaint. 'the lines aren't right' & that means I'll have empasto ghosting

[@thepolarcool1]

As someone born in 1997 I really love your videos and the passion you put into them. I love learning about this older technology and getting an understanding about things that most people just don't care remember nowadays

[@LaskyLabs]

Ah. The joys of having a wall that can be easily chroma keyed.

[@pseudonymous1382]

The Sony one honestly sounds like a pretty great idea. For repetitive work such as label making, or document signing, it could fill a very particular niche.

[@marcberm]

Wow! A device that's both amazing AND amazingly simple for it's time.

[@marcberm]

Like... There are very few devices which are generally impressive in a technical way, while also turning out to be more than the sum of their parts.

[@ErickRibeiro]

Broke: Windows 2000 wall Woke: Windows 95 wall

[@nairanvac79]

Bespoke: Blue screen of death wall

[@belstar1128]

Ms dos wall.

[@nickwallette6201]

I think he should have stuck with BIOS Boot Screen wall.

[@dh2032]

I still can that shade of blue

[@Roxor128]

@@nickwallette6201 Ooh! VGA text-mode! Yes, please!

[@katkothaza]

Why does this guy only have 40K subscribers? And also, why only now he was suggested to me by KZbin? I watch more nerdy stuff than I watch anything else!! Dude!! you got it all!! there is definitely something wrong in KZbin cause you did everything perfectly and I'm sure that millions would have subscribed if they came across one of your videos. I salute all your Patreons .

[@mfbfreak]

Re: Ni-Cd batteries and the power draw Ni-Cd batteries were actually really good at delivering short peak power. They were the best type of cell you could get for short duration high power delivery. The total capacity was relatively low, but the impulse power they could produce without bad effects was very good. Right up until the 2010s, they were found in Makita power drills. They skipped Ni-MH cells altogether (at least i never saw ni-mh in my store for makita power drills) and jumped to lithium right away when those started to become good enough.

[@CathodeRayDude]

oh absolutely, I should have clarified - I'm sure they could deliver massive amperage on the spot but if that pack rates more than 1000mAh, I'll eat my hat. Frankly more like 400mAh - I can't imagine it lasted longer then a few minutes.

[@LN997-i8x]

The new blue paint was a great idea!

[@VOX471]

Always a pleasure to watch your presentations. Thank you very much for producing these.

[@BrianRRenfro]

I am only 3 minutes in and at the first use demo. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHAT TECH I HAVE IN MY POCKET IN 2021! My grew up in the 80's ass is amazed and this is the most high tech thing I have ever seen. I can die now.

[@ppp_ppp_ppp_ppp_ppp_ppp]

that intro is so aesthetic. that new color is a hit

[@Gogogordy1]

I've been in the copier biz since 1977 and I remember some (all) of these silly things which in all honesty were cool, if not very gimmicky googaws back in the day. Thoroughly enjoyed your video on this subject however so Thank You for doing so.

[@ferongr]

Pendant alert: The thing that gets transferred to the paper in a thermal transfer printer is actually wax. When its activated by the printhead, it literally melts, detaches itself from the smooth PET carrier film and attaches itself to the comparatively rough paper surface. There are other formulations mixed with special resin, or even that resin by itself for greater smudge resistance and printing on synthetic materials but that's going a bit deep.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I think that British magazine talked about the devices like they were new because they had yet to come to the UK at all. So they’d have been seen in news reports about overseas (usually American) tech developments, possibly movies, possibly some people with money to burn imported them (hence the “no longer just an executive toy” caption on the photo I imagine - regular salesmen weren’t using them yet in the UK like they allegedly were in the USA, but an executive might have brought it back from a business trip). So they were simultaneously known about yet generally unavailable - touch tone phones had this allure to them for a few years in the late 60s and early 70s in the UK too. People saw them in American media, complained about still having rotary dials, and the GPO whipped up a model with a keypad that generated rotary dial clicks since their network didn’t actually support tone dialling yet. Excellent teal colour as well. Turquoise over blue IMO. I noticed you used it to isolate yourself from your graphics as well - are you going to be putting the tape boxes back, or are they gone for good to help serve this new dual purpose? Lastly: loved the mini rant about how businesses only go for things they think are sure deals. That’s part of why outsourcing and badge-engineering has become so huge in the last 50 years too - outsource all the risk to your supplier, slap your name on it, rake in your profit margin vs whatever you pay your supplier.

[@Bou_Diran]

This product is so cool. I was born in '91 and have been using all the bits of tech and neat gear I have been able to get my hands on ever since and yet I feel like if it was repackaged in a less clearly very 80's case and had a lithium battery instead of the nickle cadmium you could show it off, tell me it was the same price as was originally released at, and even tell me everything it does to function and I would be inclined to think, "what cool 2010's tech, I wish we had those when I was a kid" xD Your the king of finding things that boggle and delight my sensibilities CRD ^^

[@SnepperStepTV]

Shopping for one of these now! Have a need for vintage cookbook scanning, informational and how-to book & magazine research compilation, and artistic purposes as well as some more precise analog scrapbooking uses.

[@ferociousgumby]

It would be a treat to see an infomercial for one of these, maybe starring Ron Popeil. "HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED TO YOU? (a guy stealing documents gets busted by police). INTRODUCING. . . the Port-A-Copy" (not to be confused with Port-A-Potty). "Copy Jack" sort of has the flavor of "hijack" (doing something illegal, which a lot of copying was/is).

[@jackkraken3888]

"Broken garbage that nobody wants" Ebay Sellers: "But you bought it, mhwahaahaa!"

[@scottgfx]

Just wanted to add that there have been cameras based in linear CCD technology. I think most have been large format, and do require long exposures. Think, high-res catalog or product shots from around 20 years ago. There have also been camera projects based around modifying a flat-bed scanner into a camera... a very large box format camera!

[@WCBROW01]

I want a Windows 95 wall now.

[@oscarfeatherstone6688]

Just found this channel. This is exactly the kind of in-depth nerdery I'd been looking for. Thank you.

[@DigitalJedi]

I absolutely love seeing specialized mechanisms like this. It's simple, it's dumb, it solves a problem, and it just works. I like to call things like the roller physically advancing the print mechanism "mechanical intelligence." It's like a fine watch or an engine, mechanical things working together to make something happen automatically, with little or no actual brains to it. I actively try to implement this type of intelligence in designs I make when I can. For example: My robotics team needs to have a cup on an arm that dumps things out into bins, and needs to bin to return to an upright position inside the robot to collect the next item from our intake. We could use servos to move it, but we are limited to 12 servos on a machine in the rules. We have skated around these in the past, using 2 servos for 4 things with a multiplexer, but that's not applicable here. We could use one of our limited servos on an extending arm, but we now have to not use one elsewhere, run wiring out on an extended arm and not have it tangle when it retracts. Instead, we have the cup shaped in such a way that when it hits the edge of the bin, it just gets pushed into tipping over. We make sure it lines up with the intake when it retracts by having a set of pins on the upper rim of the cup engage with "tracks" inside the machine. This has saved us a servo, the weird wiring problems of putting it on an arm that gets 6x longer, completely automates the process of dumping the material, and always matches with the intake. If we had done this in software with a servo, it would have likely been an extra button to press while driving which would waste time in a match.

[@St0rmcrash]

Great video. What a neat and odd piece of forgotten and as it seems failed tech. Reminds me of how much "cool" but now redundant tech you see in old catalogs from places like Radio Shack

[@flightlesssquirrel503]

Even in 2021, there is something cool about a handheld photocopier

[@FalconFour]

Great video. I had one of those Porta-Copy machines some 10 years ago (life changed since then, it's been lost). Wasn't terribly useful then, and had a dead battery then as well. I played with it a bit though. Never had a use for it. What I will add to this, though, is that I don't think it has any digital logic in it at all - no microcontroller, no memory, no buffer. Just pure analog connections between the sensor and the print head. Notice that there's no dots, no dithering... and dare I say, greyscale! That's not a microcontroller, that's just purely working in the analog realm. Clever dang things, though. If I had to guess, they didn't take off because people already had established other ways of solving the problem these were there to solve, and they were never around when the opportunity arose. So they were just relegated to the closet.

[@nickkapirnas]

I saw a Casio copier at a local op-shop that appears to use the same concept as the Sony copier you showed in your video, I didn't buy it as the op-shop wanted way too much money for it but I had wondered since what it actually was and how it worked, and this video answered all of those questions. Great job again!

[@testcardsandmore1231]

Oh, I remember seeing these in mail order catalogs in the late 80's. I was only a kid back then and had no legitimate use for one but I thought they were cool and very high tech.

[@gblargg]

8:42 You don't even need 64 bytes. The image sensor and thermal element probably handle data serially, so as it reads the CCD data out it could be sending that to the thermal driver immediately. It might not even have 64 bytes of RAM. 9:48 I think it must have an encoder. If it were simply modulating the heat of the thermal heads continuously based on the image sensor, it would "overexpose" the paper if you were moving it more slowly, or stopped for a moment. I think it does have an encoder, and every "pulse" it signals the unit to scan the image sensor, match the thermal to it, then after a preset time turn off the thermal output and wait for the next pulse. This is the only way to ensure even exposure.

[@haroldlloyd8233]

Yes, HP had an inkjet in 1984. I can't think WHY I had one of the original versions 8 or 10 years later, but I had one.

[@bl3ivids]

I used to work in a betting shop (bookies) here in the UK. While watching this, I couldn't help think of the EPOS we used that would take scans of customers bets and reprint them onto thermal paper with a barcode as the bettors prrof of bet, while the original would be binned but a digital copy translated (by me) into a bet the computers could understand and settle. It's like these scanners, but "wider". Thanks for the vid! GL on S3.

[@JessicaFEREM]

funny that these exist, the age before smartphone cameras to become indistinguishable from a home scanner. I still prefer a real scanner, but if I'm just quickly turning a paper into a PNG or something, phone app scanners are a life saver.

[@RonaldoTalison]

The smartphone cameras are really good today but I never managed to make a document look like a scan with my phone.

[@belstar1128]

And then you get a bunch of ads for free Russian ladies in Hindi interrupting the scan.

[@jackkraken3888]

@@RonaldoTalison You should try phone app scanners like Microsoft lens, they allow you to take photos even if they are not exactly on top then by aligning the corners of the page it will do the rest. And at least for me they do actually look like a scanned image.

[@PinaEverlue]

"and that ofcourse means that i have 6" keep making videos forever this is wonderful

[@ptyps]

"Through the power of buying two of them." has some competition.

[@adueppen]

The thermal transfer ribbons are especially cool when they were used in typewriters, several companies made extremely compact and battery-powered ones, including Silver-Reed. The ribbons are quite hard to find anymore compared to most other electronic typewriters, but of course the major advantage is that you don't need them as long as you have a roll of fax paper. I've been meaning to get one, but to be honest I'm actually a bit more interested in the portable pen plotters in a typewriter form factor that were a thing in the 80s as well (although the pens for those are even harder to find than the thermal typewriter ribbons). Also, Silver-Reed is quite an interesting company, I've been trying to find more information on them ever since I inherited my grandpa's old electronic typewriter but unfortunately details are quite sparse. Their main industry was actually knitting machines, which actually ties into kind of a fun connection: Brother is most well-known for printing devices, Silver-Reed for knitting machines, and Singer for sewing machines. However, all 3 of those companies have been active in all 3 of those product categories at some point or another.

[@skelkankaos]

Yes I love technology that I've never heard of. Like this makes no tangible difference in my life but I'm so so glad that it exists in my brain now. As always great video

[@robertoXCX]

You're seriously gunning for my #1 favorite KZbinr. My current number 1 is a tie between Technology Connections and ContraPoints

[@tandy390]

Was so happy to see a new video. Love your work. Thanks.

[@nbarrager]

"It's broken garbage that nobody needs or wants" *spends absurd amount of money on broken garbage* I feel your pain, man...

[@der.Schtefan]

Brilliantly researched, like always! Bravo. Very entertaining too!

[@Stoney3K]

You can still find these thermal transfer ribbons on almost every label printer today.

[@MichaelSeneschal]

😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳 Just found this channel! I love the internet, this is why I don’t want regular TV. Fantastic, such high quality videos man. I’ll be binge watching the other videos throughout the week.

[@indextron2388]

Finding your channel has been amazing, criminally underrated.

[@TNE_YT]

Great vid, kept me glued to the screen!

[@BuckeyeStormsProductions]

Funny what you said about red text. In the mid 90's, when I entered the workforce, I remember a coworker joking (maybe?) about never signing documents with a red pen, because it was symbolic of signing in blood. I remember another coworker always arguing red text couldn't be copied, so it was the best way to assure your signature was an original signature. And...probably neither of their arguments had anything to do with this, so... I was later taught to sign in blue, because it was the least easy color to imitate...haha... Edit: Got to the end. Do you mean DAK? Look them up, and you'll see what their deal was! My Dad worked for a science museum in the late 80's, and while he was more on the administrative side, they spammed everyone there with their, "tech catalogs." He used to bring them home for me to pour over.

[@nickwallette6201]

Oh my gosh... 4:05 looks *JUST* like one of the Logitech ads from the mid-late 90s. All you need is some nerdy dude (

[@Carstuff111]

Yep, glad I found another channel that is awesome to watch!!! The Windows booting wall was great!

[@SeanBZA]

Sharp one used all parts made by Sharp for themselves, the printer is from a cash register or printing calculator, and the scanner is also one made for use in barcode scanners, all things Sharp made for use in point of sale applications, so volume made them very low cost. Likely only cost Sharp $30 to make, and likely also used internally Sharp designed and built ASIC chips to get all the logic together into one, using a 68000 series Hitachi microcontroller with 64k of RAM built in. Probably only 3 chips in there, one the microcontroller, one the Sharp printer control chip, and then an ASIC that did the rest.

[@SheepRanic]

I remember those gadgets in the DAK catalog.. ;) I am amused to discover it works exactly like I imagined it would. Would any of us have guessed we'd be carrying around portable network-connected computers with high resolution cameras in 25 years?

[@Evansmustard]

Its been soooo long since I came across a KZbin channel that's such a g e m and spend my entire Saturday binging it. You're such a cool dude!

[@Thebigskullman]

Such cool, creative innovation though. I always find stuff like that (usually) from the 80’s mind blowing everytime. From this stuff to things like Satellaview (internet-based game downloading pre-internet era) to spotting an LCD on a desk in a background, a decade before they were widespread, is what I live for.

[@garrykanter5773]

The one that prints on plain paper uses Pla-Doh Copy Technology©.

[@SCU3A_S7EVE]

The one that copies only a few lines of text at a time uses photoconductance techniques developed by the Silly Putty Corporation®.

[@garrykanter5773]

@@SCU3A_S7EVE That's what *I* meant! Don't ever get old.

[@RedHeadForester]

"An inventor knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

[@Moooosu]

These are really interesting devices! You got me curious when you were talking about the Copy-Jack and Panacopy weirdness and they're even obscure in Japan. They were so brief and niche in Japan's electronic scene that not much is talked about these types of devices. The Panacopy Mini was sold under their National brand in Japan for a period, while the Copy-Jack was sold under Plus Japan in 1985, but as you said they're just copies of each other. Surprisingly I can find more about the Copy-Jack on Japanese sites then the Panacopy, the only other one with notoriety being the Fuji Xerox copiers. The Porta Copy is a complete mystery and there are no documentation I can find of it ever being sold in Japan or a version of it sold by another manufacture.

[@Moooosu]

It gets even more confusing when you start looking at the Japanese website of Silver-Reed and see that they did get into the printing business, but lists it in the 1990s in color inkjets and not the 1980s. Also I can not find the rival Kakan Corporation or Copyroad that is mentioned in the New Scientist article. The only players that seem to have had a product in the Japanese market at the time were Panasonic ( with the National and Plus models), Fuji Xerox, Sony, Casio, and Ricoh. A Japanese blog does mention that the Copy-Jack might have been the first to market in 1985 and that Casio followed after, but there is no citation so this is by word of mouth.

[@Moooosu]

Also the Fuji Xerox is the most interesting of these devices as it functions like the Sony one where you scan then print on a paper sheet, but it also offered different color cassettes for printing. Draw back is that the device itself was bulky, so it really didn't have the portability as the others. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iX-3gn2GadJ8gLc

[@MikeYohe]

Your content quality keeps getting better and better.

[@roosterboy9348]

16:46 1 additional benefit of the repeat button is that it allows you to tweak the other (seemingly useless but maybe useful) settings and get the copy to look good.

[@AzureLazuline]

all quality and practicality aside, that Sony model is just... perfect? You use one end to suck up the text, then use the *other* end to spit it out wherever you want! Something about that perfect symmetry is immensely appealing and satisfying 😄

[@doc_sav]

I like your extreme mix of absolute materialism paired with anti-capitalism. Funny juxtaposition. Interesting video. You can tell these were never a big deal because publishing companies never had a massive panic meltdown about the possibility of regular folk using these to pirate books out of libraries and bookstores.

[@Intelwinsbigly]

The average wine Marxist. Holds an idiotic political view while acting like the opposite.

[@doorhanger9317]

materialism is a standard tenet of anti-capitalism... maybe not in the way you think, but talking about material pressures that guide businesses is just how you critique them

[@JemaKnight]

The 2013 leak of "The Ocean Full Of Bowling Balls" J.D. Salinger manuscript but it's leaked onto torrent sites like a low quality camrip from 2002

[@BrianBoniMakes]

At about this time I was working on scientific equipment and those printers became popular. They were good enough at the time and printed fast enough to make a tag or a record of some kind. The printer unit was made by some division of Seiko and for a while everything had one. Mostly all I had to do was remove the dust off them but the really dirty ones could be washed out with alcohol and the worked just fine afterword. When they completely failed or were damaged at first they were expensive and came in a fancy box and years later the price fell way down and they came plastic wrapped in a box of 6. Just the thermal head was also available. I suspect that same division of Seiko designed all the handheld scanner/printer just to make use of the thermal print mechanisms.

[@soniclegend44]

New Cathode Ray Dude ensures a great day!

[@RhizometricReality]

Always makes me smile with fantastic wit and charm

[@soniclegend44]

@@RhizometricReality absolutely

[@BrianBoniMakes]

Spot on critique of capitalism. "It's not risk, it's the next sure thing."

[@dj1NM3]

I would hazard a guess that the original company producing these pocket copiers wanted to obfuscate who they were, perhaps because they didn't want any blowback if the devices were discovered to be used in corporate espionage. Unless the real designers were in Langley, Virginia and came from an organisation with a three letter name, the whole thing was a smokescreen to hide that. Once they'd procured enough devices for themselves, just let the produce die naturally in the market. They do seem like a real piece of "spy gear", designed to be small enough to fit in a large pocket, not necessarily for extreme ease of use.

[@thefireguy22]

this has got to be the most beautiful piece of 80s tech

[@MaebhsUrbanity]

Confuses me so much that Americans call photocopiers Xerox machines, A brand name. Xerox makes all sorts of things and aren't even that large in the photocopy business, maybe larger in the US.

[@youmukonpaku3168]

well, being that it's the brand that brought photocopying to the office space at the time the modern US English lexicon was forming, it does make sense. Once upon a time, if your office had a photocopier at all, it was made by Xerox and was the only Xerox product you knew about.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

It's what happens when a product becomes popular, people only know it by the brand name. Here in England we're not much better, most people still say 'Hoovers' instead of Vacuum Cleaners.

It doesn't really seem that they simplified the design by removing things. The engineering seemed to be centered around solving a problem in a simple way to begin with.

[@lucaslac124]

I often ask myself why I watch 30 minute videos about Xeroxes and faxes. Did you expect more?

[@bborkzilla]

Your illustration of the problems with these devices reminded me so much of the way those old infomercials would start out...

[@CathodeRayDude]

I realized partway through shooting that that's what I was doing and just leaned into it... damnit, I should have made those shots black and white!

[@prozacchiwawa]

As much more ergonomic as it was, i never once got a perfect scan from a scanman... always wound up with small rotation or skipped lines.

[@CathodeRayDude]

I find it much more consistent than these but yes, they're still a LITTLE squirrely - I just didn't want to go into nit-picking those when my real goal was to establish that the portacopy etc was even worse, haha.

[@ceasarsalad119]

Oh wow, Think about the free transport you could get if you bought one of these. In the UK the bus tickets are thermal paper if I'm not mistaken. Bear in mind this is immoral and illegal but may actually work.

[@brylcreemy]

I was a university student when these came out. I remember the adverts and wondering who would spend big bucks on what looked pretty useless to me. I never saw one in the wild, just in adverts, and now I know why. Copies at my uni were 5 cents so no big deal, and way more affordable than this junk.

[@MVVblog]

We have a new Techmoan channel that is way better than the old one !!!