In 1955 a young Soviet physicist named Vladimir Fridkin created something amazing: a boxlike machine, more than 3 feet high and 2 feet across, with two cylinders on the top and the high-current generator attached, that produced a very first copy of a photograph in the Soviet Union. Fridkin proudly named the device the Electrophotography Copying Machine No. 1. The authorities seemed happy—Fridkin was featured in a television show praising the Soviet achievements in science and received a small bonus for his accomplishment.
Fridkin became very popular in his research institute as his colleagues kept coming to his room every day to copy articles from foreign journals. Two years passed, and then he got a visitor of different kind. A female KGB officer went to his office to remove the machine. The first copying device in the Soviet Union was smashed to pieces, and the parts were taken to a dump. The reason? “People who come over to you can copy some prohibited materials,” Fridkin was told. Photocopiers produced in the West eventually made it to the Soviet Union, but they were kept under lock and key, available only in the offices of the Communist Party. read more here