It’s the beginning of the semester, so it’s syllabus time! When 400 students need copies in the morning, it’s time to bring out the big machinery: the high-speed duplicator.
I love office equipment, and this is one of my favorite machines. This is no wimpy copier where the paper quietly snakes through before being gently deposited into a flimsy tray. This is the next step in evolution of the mimeograph machine. For each page, it mechanically creates a stencil, and then stamps out each copy as the blank paper leaps through from one bin to the other.
The warning messages about how it can crush your hands are terrifying. I have blithely reached into a malfunctioning laser printer and gotten a hand-numbing zap for my trouble, but this guy I have a healthy respect for.