PURPOSE: To prevent occurrence of a jam due to misfeeding by disposing a solenoid clutch between a driving gear and a driving source of a reverse roller, and controlling the solenoid clutch in such a manner that a sheet to be fed is not brought back to the reverse roller in a friction-separation paper feeder.

CONSTITUTION: A reverse roller driving gear 24 is driven by a driving source through a solenoid clutch 26. That is, registration rollers 4a, 4b, a feed roller 2 and the reverse roller driving gear 24 are started and stopped independently from each other by respective solenoid clutches. Accordingly, there is provided control means for controlling the solenoid clutch 26 in such a manner that at the time of feeding a sheet to a photoreceptor 15 with the registration rollers 4a, 4b, the driving of the reverse roller 3 is started during the time at least the leading end of a sheet is completely nipped by the registration rollers 4a, 4b and then the leading end of the sheet reaches the photoreceptor 15.