Within the 1960s the Xerox company brought out a machine that made copies of documents written. The procedure was very quick and inexpensive, plus it started a boom because it was an easy way to create an immediate record of any document for that reasons like storing as files in addition to being proof of documentation.
Over time, photo copying is becoming big business, as more and more companies released their versions of copiers for the marketplace. There's been some talk recently by purchasing the appearance of the digital age, that copying documents physically in writing would become obsolete, as saving documents inside a digital file could be correct and would take up less space as opposed to filing of physical paper files.
However, copying documents physically remains to be far easier in many cases, than going with the digital process, as many times it requires the scanning of an physical document anyway to transfer it in a digital file.
Therefore the situation is still one of a dual technique of utilizing both methods of storing data. From the physical aspect it really works so long as the files don't become to varied, as then a digital concept can have a extremely high advantage.