David Gestetner invented the world’s first duplicator, giving industry, commerce,
and education a quick, economical source in the office, for printed communications.

-The Gestetner Corporation

It’s so easy! Put in the original, push a button, and out comes a copy of your letter, form, or page. What did they do in offices before the xerographic copier?

Many readers will remember carbon paper as a means of copying the out-going letter. The “cc” in the corner box of your e-mail originally meant “carbon copy,” not “courtesy copy.” When a letter was to be typed with a “carbon,” a paper sandwich was created of three layers. On top was a sheet of typing paper; next a sheet of carbon paper with the carbon side down, on the bottom was a sheet of lightweight paper called onionskin. Many a novice typist put the carbon paper in emulsion up and got a perfect copy - on the back of the original letter. Since there was no recording of keystrokes, the entire letter had to be retyped.

Making a copy of the in-coming letter was another dilemma. The Thermofax was invented to solve this problem. A semi-transparent and heat sensitive paper was used to make a copy of any carbon-based ink or image. The original letter was placed face-up and covered with the Thermofax paper. Both were placed under a glass contact frame and exposed to light. The light that passed through the Thermofax paper struck the blank areas of the white paper original and was reflected. It was the light that was absorbed by the black images on the original that heated up the Thermofax paper to create a copy. The biggest problem occurred when someone left a new box of Thermofax on the radiator or heat vent.

What happened when you needed to make multiple copies? The young Thomas Edison worked for Western Union. The automatic telegraph recording device he invented punched a paper copy with holes. Ink passing through the holes led to the idea of a stencil printing technique. He called it an autographic press. The basic process came to be known as the mimeograph. Edison added a vibrating electric motor to a perforating stylus. He used this to punch holes in the mimeograph stencil. Edison sold his invention to a rival inventor, A. B. Dick, who started an office machine business.

There was another contributor to this multiple copying process. In 1875, one out of five Americans was foreign born. David Gestetner was one of these new immigrants. He landed in New York found it too crowded. Horace Greeley’s advice sounded good and he headed west. A pickpocket stopped David’s journey in Chicago. He borrowed money to start a business-peddling kites on the streets of the Windy City. At night he assembled the kites from wood and a waxed Japanese manufactured paper. When he started painting designs on the kites, he noticed that ink leaked through the thin paper.

Edison’s invention punched holes in paper to allow the ink to pass through. Every image was made up of small dots. To print the letter “O” a circle of dots was formed. Gestetner’s paper was like a woven fabric thinly covered in wax. When the wax was removed or displaced the ink would pass. The fabric held the image in place so that now a circle could be cut sufficiently porous to pass a solid inked image of the “O.” The fabric allowed the circle to retain its center.

Gestetner needed a way to cut or put an image on his stencil and then print it. He invented a small rotating stylus that he called his “Cyclostyle.” This allowed drawing on the delicate wax paper surface without cutting the fabric of the paper. He then constructed a hinged printing frame that had to be inked by hand for each copy that was to be made. Later models saw the addition of printing press style inking rollers and the process was becoming more automated.

The newly invented typewriter could be enlisted to type the printing stencils. Typewriters were built to accomplish stencil cutting. A small lever on the keyboard allowed the typist to move the inked ribbon all the way up for red ink or all the way down for black ink. Putting the switch right in the middle removed the ribbon entirely and allowed the operator to “cut” a stencil. Instructions said to press hard on the manual keyboard.

David Gestetner continued to experiment, and all the profits from sales went into the development of the process that he was now calling the Cyclostyle after the drawing tool he used. He continued to look to the printing press for inspiration. New cylinder press designs led to the invention of his “Neo-Cyclostyle.” It was a hand cranked rotary duplicating device. It used paste ink and dual cylinders with steel driving bands. It had advantages over the rival models that used a liquid-ink-filled hollow printing drum and a seep-through or osmotic principle of inking.

The Neo-Cyclostyle machine produced a cleaner sharper image and Gestetner prided himself that his was more like a true printing process. David Gestetner was among the first to recognize that electrical motors could be added to make duplicating machines more efficient. Later, company inventors added the Gestefax. It was a way to electronically scan copy and produce a printing stencil.

The use of Neo-Cyclostyle machine and other mimeo graphic duplicators declined in use after Chester Carlson’s introduction of xerographic duplicating in the early 1960’s. For a while to make a “Gestetner” was as common a phrase around the office as to make a “Xerox” is today.