Cyclostyle (copier)

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A Rotary Cyclostyle No. 6 duplicating press. Stencil machine with its last paper in, Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, Antwerp, Belgium, 2016-07-26.jpg
A Rotary Cyclostyle No. 6 duplicating press.
French advertisement for the Gestetner Cyclostyle, circa 1900 Automatic Cyclostyle French ad OM.jpg
French advertisement for the Gestetner Cyclostyle, circa 1900

The Cyclostyle duplicating process is a form of stencil copying. A stencil is cut on wax or glazed paper by using a pen-like object with a small rowel on its tip. A large number of small short lines are cut out in the glazed paper, removing the glaze with the spur-wheel, then ink is applied. It was invented in the later 19th century by David Gestetner, who named it "cyclostyle" after a drawing tool he used. Its name incorporates "stylus", classical Latin word for a pen.

Stencil usually a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, wood or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material

Stencilling produces an image or pattern by applying pigment to a surface over an intermediate object with designed gaps in it which create the pattern or image by only allowing the pigment to reach some parts of the surface. The stencil is both the resulting image or pattern and the intermediate object; the context in which stencil is used makes clear which meaning is intended. In practice, the (object) stencil is usually a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, wood or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material.

David Gestetner Austrian inventor

David Gestetner was the inventor of the Gestetner stencil duplicator, the first piece of office equipment that allowed production of numerous copies of documents quickly and inexpensively. He was awarded the John Scott Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1888.

Stylus a writing utensil

A stylus, plural styli or styluses, is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision when using touchscreens. It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen. Many styluses are heavily curved to be held more easily. Another widely used writing tool is the stylus used by blind users in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille.

In year 1893 Francis Galton gave the following brief description of a cyclostyle:

Francis Galton English polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Sir Francis Galton, FRS was an English Victorian era statistician, progressive, polymath, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, and psychometrician. He was knighted in 1909.

"The cyclostyle, which is an instrument used for multiple writing, makes about 140 dots to the inch. The style has a minute spur-wheel or roller, instead of a [pen] point ; the writing is made on stencil paper, whose surface is covered with a brittle glaze. This is perforated by the teeth of the spur-wheel wherever they press against it. The half perforated sheet is then laid on writing paper, and an inked roller is worked over the glaze. The ink passes through the perforations and soaks through them on to the paper below ; consequently the impression consists entirely of short and irregular cross bars or dots." [1]

In 1875 Thomas Edison received a patent for the "electric pen", which a decade later was superseded by the mimeograph machine. The cyclostyle was a more automated type of mimeograph machine that produced reproductions faster. See stencil duplicator and Gestetner Cyclograph Company.

Thomas Edison American inventor and businessman

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman, who has been described as America's greatest inventor. He is credited with developing many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb, had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He is often credited with establishing the first industrial research laboratory.

Electric pen

Thomas Edison's electric pen, part of a complete outfit for duplicating handwritten documents and drawings, was the first relatively safe electric-motor-driven office appliance produced and sold in the United States.

In 1893 Francis Galton described a system for sending line drawings through the widely established telegraph system, using simple numeric codes, and printing out the line drawings at the other end from the codes. He referred to this printer as a "Cyclostyle". It contained elements of Gestetner's system, and also elements in common with modern computer graphics printing of line drawings. [1]

Line art two-dimensional art style without gradations in shade or hue

Line art or line drawing is any image that consists of distinct straight or curved lines placed against a background, without gradations in shade (darkness) or hue (color) to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects. Line art can use lines of different colors, although line art is usually monochromatic. Line art emphasizes form and outline, over color, shading, and texture. However, areas of solid pigment and dots can also be used in addition to lines. The lines in a piece of line art may be all of a constant width, of several (few) constant widths, or of freely varying widths.

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Printer (computing) electronic device which produces a representation of an electronic document on physical media

In computing, a printer is a peripheral device which makes a persistent human-readable representation of graphics or text on paper. The first computer printer designed was a mechanically driven apparatus by Charles Babbage for his difference engine in the 19th century; however, his mechanical printer design was not built until 2000. The first electronic printer was the EP-101, invented by Japanese company Epson and released in 1968. The first commercial printers generally used mechanisms from electric typewriters and Teletype machines. The demand for higher speed led to the development of new systems specifically for computer use. In the 1980s were daisy wheel systems similar to typewriters, line printers that produced similar output but at much higher speed, and dot matrix systems that could mix text and graphics but produced relatively low-quality output. The plotter was used for those requiring high quality line art like blueprints.

Mimeograph

The stencil duplicator or mimeograph machine is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The mimeograph process should not be confused with the spirit duplicator process.

Plotter computer output device that draws on paper by moving a pen

The plotter is a computer printer for printing vector graphics. Plotters draw pictures on paper using a pen. In the past, plotters were used in applications such as computer-aided design, as they were able to produce line drawings much faster and of a higher quality than contemporary conventional printers, and small desktop plotters were often used for business graphics. Although they retained a niche for producing very large drawings for many years, plotters have now largely been replaced by wide-format conventional printers.

Laser printing type of printer

Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively charged cylinder called a "drum" to define a differentially charged image. The drum then selectively collects electrically charged powdered ink (toner), and transfers the image to paper, which is then heated in order to permanently fuse the text, imagery, or both. As with digital photocopiers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process. However, laser printing differs from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of the medium across the printer's photoreceptor. This enables laser printing to copy images more quickly than most photocopiers.

A line matrix printer is a computer printer that is a compromise between a line printer and a dot matrix printer. Basically, it prints a page-wide line of dots. It builds up a line of text by printing lines of dots.

Duplicating machines were the predecessors of modern document-reproduction technology. They have now been replaced by digital duplicators, scanners, laser printers and photocopiers, but for many years they were the primary means of reproducing documents for limited-run distribution.

Stationery writing materials

Stationery is a mass noun referring to commercially manufactured writing materials, including cut paper, envelopes, writing implements, continuous form paper, and other office supplies. Stationery includes materials to be written on by hand or by equipment such as computer printers.

Thermal printing

Thermal printing is a digital printing process which produces a printed image by selectively heating coated thermochromic paper, or thermal paper as it is commonly known, when the paper passes over the thermal print head. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, producing an image. Two-colour direct thermal printers can print both black and an additional colour by applying heat at two different temperatures.

Gestetner duplicating machine

The Gestetner is a type of duplicating machine named after its inventor, David Gestetner. During the 20th century, the term Gestetner has been used as a verb—as in Gestetnering. The Gestetner company established its base in London, filing its first patent in 1879. The business grew, remaining within the control of the Gestetner family, and acquiring other businesses. In 1996, the Gestetner company was acquired by the Ricoh Corporation of Japan.

Syphon recorder

The syphon or siphon recorder is an obsolete electromechanical device used as a receiver for submarine telegraph cables invented by William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin in 1867. It automatically records an incoming telegraph message as a wiggling ink line on a roll of paper tape. Later a trained telegrapher would read the tape, translating the pulses representing the "dots" and "dashes" of the Morse code to characters of the text message.

Rollerball pen writing implement

Roller ball pens or rollerball pens are pens which use ball point writing mechanisms with water-based liquid or gelled ink, as opposed to the oil-based viscous inks found in ballpoint pens. These less viscous inks, which tend to saturate more deeply and more widely into paper than other types of ink, give roller ball pens their distinctive writing qualities. The writing point is a tiny ball, usually 0.5 or 0.7 mm in diameter, that transfers the ink from the reservoir onto the paper as the pen moves.

Blotting paper highly absorbent type of paper or other material

Blotting paper, sometimes called bibulous paper, is a highly absorbent type of paper or other material. It is used to absorb an excess of liquid substances from the surface of writing paper or objects. Blotting paper referred to as bibulous paper is mainly used in microscopy to remove excess liquids from the slide before viewing. Blotting paper has also been sold as a cosmetic to aid in the removal of skin oils and makeup.

Risograph

Risograph is a brand of digital duplicators manufactured by the Riso Kagaku Corporation, that are designed mainly for high-volume photocopying and printing. It was released in Japan in August 1986. It is sometimes called a digital duplicator or printer-duplicator, as newer models can be used as a network printer as well as a stand-alone duplicator. When printing or copying many duplicates of the same content, it is typically far less expensive per page than a conventional photocopier, laser printer, or inkjet printer.

Photocopier device for reproducing documents

A photocopier is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process that uses electrostatic charges on a light-sensitive photoreceptor to first attract and then transfer toner particles onto paper in the form of an image. Heat, pressure or a combination of both is then used to fuse the toner onto the paper. Copiers can also use other technologies such as ink jet, but xerography is standard for office copying. Earlier versions included the Gestetner stencil duplicator, invented by David Gestetner in 1881.

Wheatstone system

The Wheatstone system was an automated telegraph system that replaced a human operator with machines capable of sending and recording Morse code at a consistent fast rate. The system included a perforator, which prepared punched paper tape called a Wheatstone slip, a transmitter that read the tape and converted the symbols into dots and dashes encoded as mark and space electric currents on the telegraph line, and a receiver at the other end of the telegraph line that printed the Morse symbols. The system was invented by Charles Wheatstone. Enhancements could be made so that it was a duplex system, able to send and receive on the same line simultaneously.

References

  1. 1 2 Francis Galton's description of the cyclostyle is in Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Volume XIV , year 1893, pages 13–26, with cyclostyle on pages 20-22.