Volume 9, Number 3
May 1985

Two Face-Up Copiers Marketed in U.S.

The American company that was developing a face-up copier has gone Out of business, which makes the copiers developed in Britain more interesting than they were before. There is a big one called the Image Digitiser, which can do anything; it is made by Optronics. The Selectec Duo Copy costs 1/4 to 1/3 as much, and is made by Select Trading Ltd. Both were developed for the British Library, both use a V-shaped cradle, and both are now being offered for sale in America.

The Image Digitiser has a reading head which houses a high resolution linescan camera. This camera scans a page in 6 seconds, at 200 pixels per horizontal and vertical inch, and sends the image to a printer. A fast printer can print a page in less than 10 seconds. The image can also be transmitted via modem to another library, or stored, or enlarged or reduced. Optronics hopes to market it for legal, medical, insurance and banking purposes as well. The Digitiser alone, without the intelligent interface with store or any extras, costs £19,600; with all the extras, it is £26,925. The company also offers an interface to a fiber optic cable network and to an optical disc for mass data storage. Contact Optronics Ltd., Cambridge Research Park, Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 4BH, England.

The Selectec Duo Copy does it all with mirrors, inside both the copier and the "module," which corresponds to the reading head of the Digitiser. Mita Industrial, a well-established Japanese company, manufactures the model chosen, the Mita DC211 plain paper copier using a dry toner. It can make a copy every three seconds, not counting page-turning time. Cost is estimated at £6950; discounts and rental or leasing schemes may be available. Contact Select Trading Ltd., Ronans Grange, Chavey Down Road, Brackness, Berks. RG12 6LY, England.