It is impossible to overstate how important/useful Xerox copiers were to offices (and anyone else who needed to make copies on small scale, e.g. schoolteachers,

It is impossible to overstate how important/useful Xerox copiers were to offices (and anyone else who needed to make copies on small scale, e.g. schoolteachers, churches, zine authors, ...). The previous state of the art was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestetner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestetner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermofax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermofax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper all of which are more or less terrible by comparison.