Now You See It, Now You Don't!

TellZall's object for January is the Mimeograph

Until the late 1800s, making copies of a document was a laborious, expensive undertaking. You could copy it by hand. Or you could use a special ink and transfer the material using dampened paper, which was time consuming and had limited success. Or you could take a photograph of it and make multiple prints. Or you could set it in type and actually print it. None of these methods was truly satisfactory if one sought inexpensive, quick copies.

The problem captured the interest of Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), perhaps the most successful inventor in American history as attested to by his record number of American patents, 1,093. Edison early on learned that he needed to concentrate on commercially viable projects if he was to make a living as an inventor.

In 1876 the twenty-eight-year-old Edison introduced his "electric pen." The unit contained no ink and resembled an eggbeater more than a writing instrument. It consisted of a small electric motor — the first electric motor to used commercially — that propelled a needle up and down a hollow shaft eight thousand times a minute. An operator held the device like a pen and “wrote” by moving it over a sheet of waxed paper. The pen's needle punched holes in the paper, making a stencil. The stencil then was sandwiched in a press, or frame, over a sheet of ordinary paper, and ink was then applied to it with a roller. The ink was forced through the holes in the stencil onto the paper below, making a copy. One stencil could be used to make as many as one thousand copies.

"There is more money in this than telegraphy," Edison proclaimed. He marketed a set that included an electric pen, press, inking roller, ink, and battery for $30. Although somewhat tricky to use — if the pen was held in one place too long, the stencil would have a huge hole — the "Electro-Autographic Press," as Edison first called his invention, was a huge success. It won a gold medal at the 1876 U.S. Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and Edison manufactured and sold more than 60,000 units.

About 1884 Albert Blake Dick of Chicago was experimented with a similar process. He contacted Edison, worked out a deal to purchase Edison's rights, and introduced the Edison Mimeograph duplicator. Dick realized that the Edison name would carry great weight with consumers, and he added the trademark Mimeograph, which he derived from the Greek word meaning to imitate. About 1888 Dick developed an improved stencil that worked well with the typewriter, which also was gaining a footing in American businesses. The A.B. Dick company further improved and automated the mimeograph process, which became a standard method of producing multiple copies of many documents, from school tests to instruction manuals to newsletters.

In the 1960s the introduction of electrostatic copies— Xerox being the most successful — largely displaced the mimeograph from American offices. While some of the rugged, reliable machines continue to operate, the "mimeo" is fast disappearing.