Duplicating machines
Encyclopedia
Duplicating machines were the predecessors of modern document-reproduction technology. They have now been replaced by digital duplicators, scanner
s, laser printer
s and photocopier
s, but for many years they were the primary means of reproducing documents for limited-run distribution.
Like the typewriter
, these machines were products of the second phase of the industrial revolution
which started near the end of the 19th century (also called the Second Industrial Revolution
). This second phase brought to mass markets technologies like the small electric motors and the products of industrial chemistry without which the duplicating machines would not have been economical. By bringing greatly increased quantities of paperwork to daily life, the duplicating machine and the typewriter
gradually changed the forms of the office desk
and transformed the nature of office
work.
They were often used in school
s, churches, and small organizations, where cheap copying was in demand for the production of newsletters and worksheets. Self-publishers also used these machines to produce fanzine
s.
A few alternatives to hand copying were invented between the mid-17th century and the late 18th century, but none had a significant impact in offices.
are mechanical devices that move a second pen parallel to one held by a writer, enabling the writer to make a duplicate of a document as it is written. Polygraphs appeared in the 17th century but did not became popular until 1800. Hawkins & Peale patented a polygraph in the US in 1803, and beginning in 1804 Thomas Jefferson collaborated with them in working on improvements in the machine. He used a polygraph for the rest of his life. However, polygraphs were not practical for most office purposes and were never widely used in businesses. Hawkins & Peale lost money producing polygraphs. The problem was their "inherent instability, and constant need for repair and adjustment."
obtained a patent for letter copying presses, which James Watt & Co. produced beginning in that year. Letter copying presses were used by the early 1780s by the likes of Benjamin Franklin
, George Washington
, and Thomas Jefferson
. In 1785, Jefferson was using both stationary and portable presses made by James Watt & Co.
Using letter copying presses, copies could be made up to twenty-four hours after a letter was written, though copies made within a few hours were best. A copying clerk would begin by counting the number of master letters to be written during the next few hours and by preparing the copying book. Suppose the clerk wanted to copy 20 one-page letters. In that case, he would insert a sheet of oiled paper into the copying book in front of the first tissue on which he wanted to make a copy of a letter. He would then turn 20 sheets of tissue paper and insert a second oiled paper. To dampen the tissue paper, the clerk used a brush or copying paper damper. The damper had a reservoir for water that wet a cloth, and the clerk wiped the cloth over the tissues on which copies were to be made. As an alternative method of dampening the tissue paper, in 1860 Cutter, Tower & Co., Boston, advertised Lynch's patent paper moistener.
Then letters were written with special copying ink which was not blotted. The copying clerk arranged the portion of the letter book to be used in the following sequence starting from the front: a sheet of oiled paper, then a sheet of letter book tissue, then a letter placed face up against the back of the tissue on which the copy was to be made, then another oiled paper, etc.
Prior to the introduction of inks made with aniline dyes in 1856, the quality of copies made on letter copying presses was limited by the properties of the available copying inks. Some documents that were to be copied with copying presses were written with copying pencils rather than copying ink. The cores of copying pencils, which appear to have been introduced in the 1870s, were made from a mixture of graphite, clay, and aniline dye.
By the late 1870s, an improved method for moistening pages in copying books had been invented, and by the late 1880s it had been widely adopted. Rather than using a brush or damper to wet the tissues, the clerk inserted a thin moist cloth or pad between each oil paper and the following tissue.
In the late 1880s, adoption of improvements in office systems for filing unbound documents increased the demand for copying machines that made unbound copies of letters, as opposed to copies in bound books. In 1886, Schlicht & Field, Rochester, NY, introduced the Rapid Roller Damp-Leaf Copier, a roller copier, which used pressure supplied by rollers to copy letters onto a roll of dampened paper. After copies were pressed onto the paper, the paper entered the cabinet under the copier, where it dried on a large roller. An attachment was used to cut dried copies off the roll.
Copies could be made more quickly with a roller copier than with a letter copying press. It was claimed that nearly 100 papers could be copied in two minutes with a roller copier. Roller copiers competed with carbon paper
technology. It was claimed that a roller copier could make a half dozen copies of a typewritten
letter if the letter was run through the copier several times. It could make a dozen copies if the letter was written with a pen and good copying ink.
The Process Letter Machine Co., Muncie, IN, offered the New Rotary Copying Press, a loose-leaf copier, in 1902. This machine was similar to roller copiers but copied onto loose-leaf paper.
introduced in 1876 or shortly before, was a technology in which a dye-impregnated master copy, not unlike a ditto master, was laid on top of a cake pan full of firm gelatin. After the dye soaked into the gelatin, sheets of paper could be laid on top of the gelatin to transfer the image. This was good for 50 copies at most. Hectography was slow, clunky, and weird, but it could inspire great intrepidity in its users.
The mimeo machine (mimeograph) invented by Albert Blake Dick in 1884 used heavy waxed-paper "stencils" that a pen or a typewriter cut through. The stencil was wrapped around the drum of the (manual or electrical) machine, which forced ink
out through the cut marks on the stencil. The paper
had a surface texture (like bond paper), and the ink was black and odorless. A person could use special knives to cut stencils by hand, but handwriting was impractical, because any closed loop letterform would cut a hole and thus print as a black blob. If the user put the stencil on the drum wrong-side-out, the copies came out mirror-images.
) sold by Ditto, Inc. beginning in 1910, used two-ply "spirit masters" or "ditto masters". The top sheet could be typed, drawn, or written upon. The second sheet was coated with a layer of colored wax. The pressure of writing or typing on the top sheet transferred colored wax to its back side, producing a mirror image of the desired marks. (This acted like a reverse of carbon paper
.) The two sheets were then separated, and the first sheet was fastened onto the drum of the (manual or electrical) machine, with the waxed side out.
The usual wax color was aniline
purple, a cheap, moderately durable pigment that provided good contrast, though other colors were also available. Unlike mimeo, ditto had the useful ability to print multiple colors in a single pass, which made it popular with cartoonists. Spirit duplicators were incapable of double-sided printing, since the saturation of the paper with solvent inherent to the process would destroy a previously printed image. One well-made ditto master could at most print about 500 copies, far fewer than a mimeo stencil could manage. To produce further copies, an entirely new master would have to be reconstructed in the same way as the original master.
Notoriously, dittoed images would gradually fade with exposure to light, limiting their usability for permanent labels and signage. Dittoed copies now pose a serious challenge to archivist
s responsible for document and artistic preservation.
Ditto machines required much finer operating tolerances and careful adjustments to operate correctly. Overall print quality of spirit duplicators was frequently poor, though a capable operator could overcome this with careful adjustment of feed rate, pressure, and solvent volume.
During their heyday, tabletop duplicators of both sorts were the inexpensive and convenient alternatives to conventional typesetting and offset or letterpress printing. They were well suited for the short runs used for school worksheets, church newsletters, and apazines
. Even the least technically-minded teachers, professors, clergy, and self-publishers could make use of them. The machines owed most of their popularity to this relative ease of use, and in some cases, to their lack of a requirement for an external power source.
Mimeograph machines predated the spirit duplicator, had a lower cost per impression, superior print quality, finer resolution, and if properly adjusted could be used for multi-pass and double-sided printing. Also, mimeographed images were as durable as the paper they were printed on, and didn't bleach to illegibility if exposed to sunlight, the way that dittoed pages did. A good mimeo master could produce many more copies than the best ditto master. As with ditto masters, mimeo stencils could be saved and reused for later print jobs.
Mimeograph had a largely unwarranted reputation for being messier than spirit duplication. In truth, they weren't significantly messier; and if spilled mimeo ink was hard to get out of the operator's clothing, ditto's aniline purple dye was well-nigh impossible to remove. The perception may have been a side effect of their engineering. Mimeography, with its loose tolerances, relative absence of noxious solvents, and consequent open architecture (which put its inky pads and rollers on display), may simply have looked messier, and hence seemed more daunting. Spirit duplicators, whose demanding tolerances and constant fog of solvent fumes necessitated precisely machined metal parts and closed architecture, tended to have a deceptively clean and simple look.
There are still diehard mimeography enthusiasts in the United States and Canada, and mimeo technology is still in everyday use in the Third World
. The technology is simple and robust, relatively easy to troubleshoot and repair, and economical. Significantly, many low-cost mimeograph machines do not require electricity to operate.
(T-offset), American Type Founders
(Chief and Davidson lines), A.B. Dick Company
, and Addressograph-Mulitilith
.
There are also cost advantages over a copier at higher volume. For smaller print runs, the main cost is in the master material. This ranges between 40 – 80 cents per master depending on the manufacturer. When spread over 20 or more copies, the cost per copy (2 to 4 cents) is close to photocopiers. But for every additional copy, the average cost decreases. At 100 prints, the master cost per copy was only 0.4–0.8 cents per copy, and the cost of the paper printed upon will start to dominate. A master is capable of making 4000–5000 prints, and then a new master easily be made if needed for further copies.
Other manufacturers have adapted the technology including:
Image scanner
In computing, an image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop scanner where the document is placed on a glass...
s, laser printer
Laser printer
A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers , laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced...
s and photocopier
Photocopier
A photocopier is a machine that makes paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply. Most current photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process using heat...
s, but for many years they were the primary means of reproducing documents for limited-run distribution.
Like the typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
, these machines were products of the second phase of the industrial revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
which started near the end of the 19th century (also called the Second Industrial Revolution
Second Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of the larger Industrial Revolution corresponding to the latter half of the 19th century until World War I...
). This second phase brought to mass markets technologies like the small electric motors and the products of industrial chemistry without which the duplicating machines would not have been economical. By bringing greatly increased quantities of paperwork to daily life, the duplicating machine and the typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
gradually changed the forms of the office desk
Desk
A desk is a furniture form and a class of table often used in a work or office setting for reading or writing on or using a computer. Desks often have one or more drawers to store office supplies and papers. Unlike a regular table, usually only one side of a desk is suitable to sit on . Not all...
and transformed the nature of office
Office
An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the...
work.
They were often used in school
School
A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
s, churches, and small organizations, where cheap copying was in demand for the production of newsletters and worksheets. Self-publishers also used these machines to produce fanzine
Fanzine
A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest...
s.
Mechanical duplicators
Until the late 18th century, if an office wanted to keep a copy of an outgoing letter, a clerk had to write out the copy by hand. This technology continued to be prevalent through most of the 19th century. For this purpose offices employed copy clerks, also known as copyists, scribes, and scriveners.A few alternatives to hand copying were invented between the mid-17th century and the late 18th century, but none had a significant impact in offices.
Polygraphs
PolygraphsPolygraph (duplicating device)
A Polygraph is a device that produces a copy of a piece of writing simultaneously with the creation of the original, using pens and ink.Patented by John Isaac Hawkins in 1803, it was most famously used by the third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson, who acquired his first polygraph in 1804, later...
are mechanical devices that move a second pen parallel to one held by a writer, enabling the writer to make a duplicate of a document as it is written. Polygraphs appeared in the 17th century but did not became popular until 1800. Hawkins & Peale patented a polygraph in the US in 1803, and beginning in 1804 Thomas Jefferson collaborated with them in working on improvements in the machine. He used a polygraph for the rest of his life. However, polygraphs were not practical for most office purposes and were never widely used in businesses. Hawkins & Peale lost money producing polygraphs. The problem was their "inherent instability, and constant need for repair and adjustment."
Letter copying presses
In 1780 James WattJames Watt
James Watt, FRS, FRSE was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.While working as an instrument maker at the...
obtained a patent for letter copying presses, which James Watt & Co. produced beginning in that year. Letter copying presses were used by the early 1780s by the likes of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
, and Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
. In 1785, Jefferson was using both stationary and portable presses made by James Watt & Co.
Using letter copying presses, copies could be made up to twenty-four hours after a letter was written, though copies made within a few hours were best. A copying clerk would begin by counting the number of master letters to be written during the next few hours and by preparing the copying book. Suppose the clerk wanted to copy 20 one-page letters. In that case, he would insert a sheet of oiled paper into the copying book in front of the first tissue on which he wanted to make a copy of a letter. He would then turn 20 sheets of tissue paper and insert a second oiled paper. To dampen the tissue paper, the clerk used a brush or copying paper damper. The damper had a reservoir for water that wet a cloth, and the clerk wiped the cloth over the tissues on which copies were to be made. As an alternative method of dampening the tissue paper, in 1860 Cutter, Tower & Co., Boston, advertised Lynch's patent paper moistener.
Then letters were written with special copying ink which was not blotted. The copying clerk arranged the portion of the letter book to be used in the following sequence starting from the front: a sheet of oiled paper, then a sheet of letter book tissue, then a letter placed face up against the back of the tissue on which the copy was to be made, then another oiled paper, etc.
Prior to the introduction of inks made with aniline dyes in 1856, the quality of copies made on letter copying presses was limited by the properties of the available copying inks. Some documents that were to be copied with copying presses were written with copying pencils rather than copying ink. The cores of copying pencils, which appear to have been introduced in the 1870s, were made from a mixture of graphite, clay, and aniline dye.
By the late 1870s, an improved method for moistening pages in copying books had been invented, and by the late 1880s it had been widely adopted. Rather than using a brush or damper to wet the tissues, the clerk inserted a thin moist cloth or pad between each oil paper and the following tissue.
In the late 1880s, adoption of improvements in office systems for filing unbound documents increased the demand for copying machines that made unbound copies of letters, as opposed to copies in bound books. In 1886, Schlicht & Field, Rochester, NY, introduced the Rapid Roller Damp-Leaf Copier, a roller copier, which used pressure supplied by rollers to copy letters onto a roll of dampened paper. After copies were pressed onto the paper, the paper entered the cabinet under the copier, where it dried on a large roller. An attachment was used to cut dried copies off the roll.
Copies could be made more quickly with a roller copier than with a letter copying press. It was claimed that nearly 100 papers could be copied in two minutes with a roller copier. Roller copiers competed with carbon paper
Carbon paper
Carbon paper is paper coated on one side with a layer of a loosely bound dry ink or pigmented coating, usually bound with wax. It is used for making one or more copies simultaneous with the creation of an original document...
technology. It was claimed that a roller copier could make a half dozen copies of a typewritten
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
letter if the letter was run through the copier several times. It could make a dozen copies if the letter was written with a pen and good copying ink.
The Process Letter Machine Co., Muncie, IN, offered the New Rotary Copying Press, a loose-leaf copier, in 1902. This machine was similar to roller copiers but copied onto loose-leaf paper.
Hectographs
The hectographHectograph
The hectograph or gelatin duplicator or jellygraph is a printing process which involves transfer of an original, prepared with special inks, to a pan of gelatin or a gelatin pad pulled tight on a metal frame.-Process:...
introduced in 1876 or shortly before, was a technology in which a dye-impregnated master copy, not unlike a ditto master, was laid on top of a cake pan full of firm gelatin. After the dye soaked into the gelatin, sheets of paper could be laid on top of the gelatin to transfer the image. This was good for 50 copies at most. Hectography was slow, clunky, and weird, but it could inspire great intrepidity in its users.
Mimeographs
Ink
Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill...
out through the cut marks on the stencil. The paper
Paper
Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
had a surface texture (like bond paper), and the ink was black and odorless. A person could use special knives to cut stencils by hand, but handwriting was impractical, because any closed loop letterform would cut a hole and thus print as a black blob. If the user put the stencil on the drum wrong-side-out, the copies came out mirror-images.
Spirit duplicators
The ditto machine (spirit duplicatorSpirit duplicator
A spirit duplicator was a low-volume printing method used mainly by schools and churches. It was also used by members of science fiction fandom and early comic book fandom to produce fanzines...
) sold by Ditto, Inc. beginning in 1910, used two-ply "spirit masters" or "ditto masters". The top sheet could be typed, drawn, or written upon. The second sheet was coated with a layer of colored wax. The pressure of writing or typing on the top sheet transferred colored wax to its back side, producing a mirror image of the desired marks. (This acted like a reverse of carbon paper
Carbon paper
Carbon paper is paper coated on one side with a layer of a loosely bound dry ink or pigmented coating, usually bound with wax. It is used for making one or more copies simultaneous with the creation of an original document...
.) The two sheets were then separated, and the first sheet was fastened onto the drum of the (manual or electrical) machine, with the waxed side out.
The usual wax color was aniline
Aniline
Aniline, phenylamine or aminobenzene is an organic compound with the formula C6H5NH2. Consisting of a phenyl group attached to an amino group, aniline is the prototypical aromatic amine. Being a precursor to many industrial chemicals, its main use is in the manufacture of precursors to polyurethane...
purple, a cheap, moderately durable pigment that provided good contrast, though other colors were also available. Unlike mimeo, ditto had the useful ability to print multiple colors in a single pass, which made it popular with cartoonists. Spirit duplicators were incapable of double-sided printing, since the saturation of the paper with solvent inherent to the process would destroy a previously printed image. One well-made ditto master could at most print about 500 copies, far fewer than a mimeo stencil could manage. To produce further copies, an entirely new master would have to be reconstructed in the same way as the original master.
Notoriously, dittoed images would gradually fade with exposure to light, limiting their usability for permanent labels and signage. Dittoed copies now pose a serious challenge to archivist
Archivist
An archivist is a professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to information determined to have long-term value. The information maintained by an archivist can be any form of media...
s responsible for document and artistic preservation.
Comparison of mimeographs and spirit duplicators
Ditto machines and mimeograph machines were competing and complementary technologies during the first half of the 20th century. Mimeography was in general a more forgiving technology, and still survives in various forms into the 21st century.Ditto machines required much finer operating tolerances and careful adjustments to operate correctly. Overall print quality of spirit duplicators was frequently poor, though a capable operator could overcome this with careful adjustment of feed rate, pressure, and solvent volume.
During their heyday, tabletop duplicators of both sorts were the inexpensive and convenient alternatives to conventional typesetting and offset or letterpress printing. They were well suited for the short runs used for school worksheets, church newsletters, and apazines
Amateur press association
An amateur press association is a group of people who produce individual pages or magazines that are sent to a Central Mailer for collation and distribution to all members of the group.-Organisation:...
. Even the least technically-minded teachers, professors, clergy, and self-publishers could make use of them. The machines owed most of their popularity to this relative ease of use, and in some cases, to their lack of a requirement for an external power source.
Mimeograph machines predated the spirit duplicator, had a lower cost per impression, superior print quality, finer resolution, and if properly adjusted could be used for multi-pass and double-sided printing. Also, mimeographed images were as durable as the paper they were printed on, and didn't bleach to illegibility if exposed to sunlight, the way that dittoed pages did. A good mimeo master could produce many more copies than the best ditto master. As with ditto masters, mimeo stencils could be saved and reused for later print jobs.
Mimeograph had a largely unwarranted reputation for being messier than spirit duplication. In truth, they weren't significantly messier; and if spilled mimeo ink was hard to get out of the operator's clothing, ditto's aniline purple dye was well-nigh impossible to remove. The perception may have been a side effect of their engineering. Mimeography, with its loose tolerances, relative absence of noxious solvents, and consequent open architecture (which put its inky pads and rollers on display), may simply have looked messier, and hence seemed more daunting. Spirit duplicators, whose demanding tolerances and constant fog of solvent fumes necessitated precisely machined metal parts and closed architecture, tended to have a deceptively clean and simple look.
There are still diehard mimeography enthusiasts in the United States and Canada, and mimeo technology is still in everyday use in the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
. The technology is simple and robust, relatively easy to troubleshoot and repair, and economical. Significantly, many low-cost mimeograph machines do not require electricity to operate.
Offset Duplicators
In the United States an offset press with a sheet size smaller than 14 x 20" is classified as a duplicator. In Europe this distinction is made between presses that have cilinder bearings, and duplicators that do not. Duplicators were manufactured by HeidelbergHeidelberger Druckmaschinen
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG is a German precision mechanical engineering company with head offices in Heidelberg . It is a manufacturer of offset printing presses sold globally. The company has a worldwide market share of more than 47% in this area and is the largest global manufacturer of...
(T-offset), American Type Founders
American Type Founders
American Type Founders was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States...
(Chief and Davidson lines), A.B. Dick Company
A.B. Dick Company
The A. B. Dick Company was a major American manufacturer of copy machines and office supplies in the late 19th Century and the 20th Century.The company was founded in 1883 in Chicago as a lumber company by Albert Blake Dick...
, and Addressograph-Mulitilith
Addressograph
An addressograph is an address labeler and labeling system.In 1896, the first U.S. patent for an addressing machine, the Addressograph was issued to Joseph Smith Duncan of Sioux City, Iowa. It was a development of the invention he had made in 1892. His earlier model consisted of a hexagonal wood...
.
Digital duplicators
In 1986, the RISO Kagaku Corporation introduced the digital duplicator. It uses the basic mimeograph technology but improves on it, in that the operator does not have to create the stencil directly. The stencil, called a master, is made by use of a scanner and thermal print head. A used master is automatically removed and placed in a disposal box, as a new one is created. This way the operator should not have to touch the used master material that is coated in ink.There are also cost advantages over a copier at higher volume. For smaller print runs, the main cost is in the master material. This ranges between 40 – 80 cents per master depending on the manufacturer. When spread over 20 or more copies, the cost per copy (2 to 4 cents) is close to photocopiers. But for every additional copy, the average cost decreases. At 100 prints, the master cost per copy was only 0.4–0.8 cents per copy, and the cost of the paper printed upon will start to dominate. A master is capable of making 4000–5000 prints, and then a new master easily be made if needed for further copies.
Other manufacturers have adapted the technology including:
- Riso Kagaku CorporationRiso Kagaku CorporationRiso Kagaku Corporation is the inventor, manufacturer, and distributor of the RISO Printer-Duplicator, a.k.a. Risograph.Established in Tokyo, Japan, Riso Kagaku is now a billion dollar company distributing product in over 150 countries. The Company is listed over the counter in Japan...
- GestetnerGestetnerThe Gestetner, named after its inventor David Gestetner, is a duplicating machine brand and company.David Gestetner, born in Csorna, Hungary, moved to London, England, and in 1881 established the Gestetner Cyclograph Company to produce stencils, styli, ink rollers, etc. He guarded his invention...
- RicohRicohor Ricoh, is a Japanese company that was established in 1936 on February 6th, as , a company in the RIKEN zaibatsu. Its headquarters is located in Ricoh Building in Chūō, Tokyo....
How digital duplicators work
Like the mimeo machine, digital duplicators have a stencil (called a master), ink, and drum—but the process is all automated.- The original is placed on a flat bed scanner or fed through a sheet feed scanner, depending on the model.
- When the start button is pressed, the image is scanned into memory by reflecting light off the original and into a CCDCharge-coupled deviceA charge-coupled device is a device for the movement of electrical charge, usually from within the device to an area where the charge can be manipulated, for example conversion into a digital value. This is achieved by "shifting" the signals between stages within the device one at a time...
. - The image is burned onto the master material that is coated on one side, in a series of small holes by the thermal print head.
- As the new master is burning it is stored while the old master is removed.
- There is a clamp plate on the drum that opens by motor. The drum turns and the old master material is fed into the disposal rollers and into the disposal box.
- The new master is fed into the clamp which closes, then the drum is turned, pulling the master onto the drum.
- The outside of the drum is covered in screens and the inside is coated in ink. The screens make sure the ink flow is regulated.
- The paper is fed to the drum, and the ink only comes through the master material where there are holes.
- A pressure roller presses the paper to the drum and transfers the ink to the paper to form the image.
- The paper then exits the machine into an exit tray. The ink is still wet.
See also
- List of duplicating processes
- RisographRisographRisograph is a high-speed digital printing system manufactured by the Riso Kagaku Corporation and designed mainly for high-volume photocopying and printing. Increasingly, Risograph machines have been commonly referred to as a RISO Printer-Duplicator, due to their common usage as a network printer...
- ThermofaxThermofaxThermo-Fax is 3M's trademarked name for a photocopying technology which it introduced in 1950. It was a form of thermographic printing and an example of a dry silver process. It was a significant advance as no chemicals were required, other than those contained in the copy paper itself...
- CyclostyleCyclostyle (copier)The Cyclostyle duplicating process is a form of stencil copying invented by David Gestetner in London in 1890. A stencil is cut with the help of small toothed wheels on a special paper underlaid with carbon paper which serves as a printing form. Gestetner named the Cyclostyle after a drawing tool...
- GestetnerGestetnerThe Gestetner, named after its inventor David Gestetner, is a duplicating machine brand and company.David Gestetner, born in Csorna, Hungary, moved to London, England, and in 1881 established the Gestetner Cyclograph Company to produce stencils, styli, ink rollers, etc. He guarded his invention...