A photocopier

These brave workhorses of offices across the country are criminally underrepresented on the internet and often considered a joke - until you need to photocopy something. Then who's laughing?

The photocopier sits there, the butt of cliched jokes about photocopying private parts and jamming up with paper, yet it is always ready for action. Ready for that one time every two years when you have to send a copy of a form to someone important and official.

Mock the photocopier, would you? You may as well mock your refrigerator, or your washing machine, or any of the other critical devices we rely upon occasionally to enhance our lives and lift us above the level of common, bark-eating savages.

This photocopier is also a fax machine. Faxing may not be quite as widespread today as predicted in 'Back to the Future', but, again, once every few years some ancient organisation such as a solicitor or bank will require a fax, a hard copy of a document, sending over immediately as a matter of extreme importance.

Faxing is not a joke - your house purchase could very well depend on your bank getting a copy of your mortgage agreement that very same day. How would you do that without a photocopier and fax machine? You wouldn't. You'd be living in a doorway hopelessly addicted to crystal meth and dead within a month.

So praise the sturdy photocopier. It will outlast everything, mainly because it's quite a difficult thing to throw away due to its mass.



Photocopiers also have USB sockets now too. This makes them even better.