Item HT 22183 Duplicator - Ellams, Flat Bed, Diaphragm Model, Late 19th Century

Summary

Flat bed duplicator, similar to an Edison Mimeograph.

This description comes from the Early Office Museum website:
(This duplicator was) 'sold in rectangular wooden boxes. The boxes contained a hand printing frame that consisted of a flat bed or printing board and a hinged frame that held the stencil. The boxes also contained an ink roller, an inking slate, ink, varnish and a brush for making corrections, waxed stencil paper, blotters, a writing stylus, and a writing plate with a file-like surface that was 1.5" to 3" top-to-bottom and as wide as the printing frame.
To prepare a handwritten stencil, "A sheet of Mimeograph stencil paper is placed over the finely grooved steel plate and written upon with a smooth pointed steel stylus, and in the line of the writing so made, the stencil paper will be perforated from the under side with minute holes, in such close proximity to each other that the dividing fibers of paper are scarcely perceptible." After the operator has written a few lines, the operator moves the stencil upward over the writing plate so that a new portion of the stencil is on top of the writing plate. "After the stencil is completed it is placed in the printing frame, by which the stencil is firmly held taut and in a position for rapid printing. After inking the roller on the slate furnished for that purpose, pass it over the stencil sheet and a correct reproduction of the matter stenciled will appear on the paper which has been previously placed underneath.""
http://www.officemuseum.com/copy_machines.htm - accessed 17 November 2008