For example, in the US in 1938, Chester Carlson (1906-68) first experimented with xerography, a method of reproducing copies of a line document. Shortly after the Second World War he developed xerography commercially, and it was taken up with remarkable speed for use in homes and offices worldwide.
However, Carlson’s invention was the result of nearly 200 years of development as people from the 18th century onwards experimented with methods of obtaining a limited number of copies of a single document.
Experiments abroad
In Vienna in 1762, Count Leopold von Niepperburg first developed a solution for the problem when he built a handwriting-duplication machine that allowed multiple copies to be made simultaneously. In 1783, the ‘physiognotrace’ was invented in France by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1754-1811), which allowed the user to make a copy of an outline drawn round a silhouette. In 1799 the French-born engineer, Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849), was granted patents in the US and Britain for a “certain new and useful Writing and Drawing Machine, by which two or more Writings or Drawings, resembling each other, may be made by the same Person at the same Time”. A US patent was granted four years later for a similar device made by John Isaac Hawkins (1772-1855), inventor of the mechanical pencil, and Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), an artist, inventor and director of the American Museum in Philadelphia.
Hawkins used the principle of the physiognotrace to construct a polygraph, a machine for the simultaneous duplication of writing, selling the US manufacturing rights to Peale before returning to England. Thomas Jefferson was the leading connoisseur of copying machines, and when he acquired one of Hawkins’s machines in 1804 he used it for all his copying and wrote: “I only lament it had not been invented thirty years sooner.”
Benjamin Franklin in the late 18th century proposed a method of reproducing French assignats (paper money), which was taken up by Charles Gassicourt (1769-1821) just before his death. The process enabled copies of recently written documents to be made by putting the writing in relief with an application of powder and then taking a cast of it in soft metal for intaglio printing. In 1821, Obrion, a French mathematician, created the ‘polygrapher’, which enabled several pen heads to move in unison. Another method, widely used in the 19th century, was transfer lithography: texts written on special paper in greasy ink could easily be transferred to stone; and in 1839 two French lithographic printers, Paul and Auguste Dupont, patented an improved transfer process by which lithographic copies could be made of leaves from books.
Experiments at home
Erasmus Darwin’s copying machine for letters and drawings, 1777
In the UK, one of the earliest attempts to reproduce manuscripts in limited quantities was made by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), polymath and physician, youngest son of Charles and friend to the printers John Baskerville and Benjamin Franklin. In Darwin’s ‘commonplace book’ for 1777 he notes his developments for a copying machine. His first endeavour, the ‘Landscape Polygrapher’, was an inverted t-shaped contraption suspended from a high point: the original paper was placed under a pointer at one end of the cross-arm and a quill pen was placed at the other end, moving the pointer enabled the quill to mimic its operation. The problem with the system was that the path traced by both the pointer and quill was a concave segment of a sphere and so both the copy paper and original needed to sit on a spherical bed. Darwin’s second attempt, the ‘Polygrapher’ or ‘Bigrapher’ used a different attachment and could easily replicate a single line, although the writing was clumsy and the copy lettering was narrower than the original. The main drawback to the system was that at the end of each line both the original and copy had to be moved to start a new line. However, encouraged by his friends Charles Greville (1749-1809), Lord of Trade in the government, and Sir Harry Harpur (1739-89) from Calke Abbey, Darwin persevered, producing a refined version of the machine in December 1778, from which Darwin sent a letter and its duplicate to Greville: this is possibly the world’s first accurately duplicated manuscript, which can now be seen in the British Library.
Darwin never profited from his invention, but he did demonstrate his machine to members of Birmingham’s Luna Society, where James Watt (1736-1819), engineer and inventor of the steam engine, immediately understood the efficacy of the invention to commerce and industry. Watt was quick to further develop Darwin’s concept and designed two different copying machines that went on to earn him a very useful income.
James Watt’s copying machine, 1780
James Watt initially experimented with improving Darwin’s invention of linking multiple pens, but soon abandoned this approach because it was too cumbersome. Instead, he tried to physically transfer ink from the front of the original to the back of another sheet, which was moistened with a solvent and pressed to the original. The second sheet had to be unsized and thin enough to ensure the ink could be seen through it when the copy was held up to the light, thus reproducing the original exactly. Watt began developing the process in 1779, and made many experiments to formulate the paper and ink; to devise a method for wetting the paper; and to make a press suitable for applying the correct pressure to achieve the transfer. The press was constructed in two forms: the first was a strong rolling press, with large rollers suitable for office use and of sufficient size to copy plans and drawings; and the second press was a compact rolling press and apparatus for copying letters enclosed in a portable writing desk which folded up into a moderate compass for travelling. In the compact version, the letter to be copied was written in special copying ink and a damp sheet of copying paper was placed over the letter, and a clean sheet of oiled backing paper lain on top. Then the package was placed between two felt covered boards and pressed by a brass roller. This created a mirror image of the original that soaked right through the thin copying paper, so it could be read the right way round on the ‘verso’ side. When the original was written in strong characters and with sufficient ink, three or four legible copies could be made and the original remained undamaged.
In order to bring his products to market, Watt formed a partnership with the Birmingham industrialists Matthew Boulton (1728-1809), who provided financing, and James Keir (1735-1820), who managed the business; James Woodmason was the leading London supplier of Watt’s machines, copying paper, and ink. Watt’s method of copying letters and drawings was a commercial success and by the end of the first year of business 630 of the original stationery models had been sold for £4,630 and notable users included William Cullen, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Wedgwood, William Goodwin and Joseph Priestley. Watt’s copying machines were used in offices into the 20th century.
Examples of letters produced using Watt’s copying machine can be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Measuring 246x202 mm the single leaves of thin, translucent, unsized wove paper carry the watermark of either ‘J WATT & Co PATENT COPYING’ or ‘sold by J WOODMASON | LONDON’.
Ralph Wedgwood’s Manifold Writer, 1806
The problem of duplicating documents in limited numbers was assisted by the invention of carbon paper. Ralph Wedgwood (1766–1837) a member of the famous Wedgwood family of potters and an inventor extraordinaire, abandoned the ceramics trade, moved to London and patented his most notable invention, the ‘Manifold Writer’, which included the earliest form of carbon paper. Patent in 1806, the Manifold Writer was a method of creating duplicate paper documents: the basic technique involved sandwiching ‘carbonated’ paper made by soaking paper in printer’s ink between writing paper on the bottom and thin ‘duplicate paper’ on the top. The text was created using a stylus, known as an ‘everlasting pen’. The first carbon duplicate became the ‘original’ copy. Wedgwood claimed that up to six impressions could be made simultaneously, and boasted to have written “400 pages quarto” with his everlasting pen. By 1807, Wedgwood had made £11,000, declaring “all the principal secretaries of state have adopted this invention”, which was also sold in Europe, Russia and the US. However, by 1822 the Manifold Writer business was dwindling primarily because business and law required original copies to be written in ink, and therefore the stylus was not acceptable.
Similar carbonated processes were used throughout the 19th century, and many kinds of portable presses were developed. In the 1880s David Gestetner (1854-1939) patented his stencil duplication process, which was widely used in the 20th century for short runs. Since then, various photocopying methods have been developed which have transformed modern office practices but which owe their origins to the inventors of the 18th and 19th centuries.
