Copying of documents has been important in offices since commercial business. At the start copying was done by hand. Offices employed clerks who stood or sat copying documents.
The first alternative to hand copying was invented in the late 17th to 18th century when James Watt patented a letter copying machine. He also made portable copying devices but copying proved difficult. Letter copying devices such as these were used by Benjamin Franklin etc. By the mid 18th century copying presses were used widely in offices. Copying presses, copying books and inks were advertised by as early as 1847. Letter copying presses were widely displayed at the 1851 Industrial Exhibition in London. The Scoville Company was still using copying presses up to 1913. Screw model copying presses were marketed until 1950. Because of the size and weight of these copying presses, potable copying presses were also for sale during the nineteenth century. Along with typewriters, letter copying machines are the most commonly found in photographs of the late 20th century.
Copying presses had limitations as letters could only be copied within a few hours. Copying clerks were responsible for the copying before it was too late as letters for copying had to be written in a special ink. Prior to the invention of inks made with aniline dyes, copying presses were limited by the properties of the copying inks.
Carbon paper for copying was patented in 1806. This helped users of the Wedgwood copying machines to write a letter while simultaneously copying it. During the 1850’s manufacturers of the Wedgwood copying press claimed that up to 10 copies could be made with the carbon copying method. Carbon copying became more important after the introduction of the typewriter.
However, neither carbon copying nor copying presses could make numerous more than 10 copies. In the 19th century, printers were used for copying jobs such as business cards, envelopes, billheads, etc. Commercial printers were used for large numbers of copying.
Smaller copying presses were developed for copying in the late 19th century. A table-top copying press was developed in 1857. A stencil copying method was developed in 1875. The trypograph copying method came in 1877 which used a stylus for copying documents. Several different patents of this style of copying were patented next. The Stygmograph was advertised as a copying pen in 1884. The Mimeograph was invented for copying in 1884.
Gestetner introduced the first “automatic” copying press in the1890’s. The Roneo Company introduced the Roneo copying machine in 1906. It used a “dry” method of copying. Copying was done on a roll of paper which was then cut afterwards. The Soennecken copying machine was made in Germany and appears to have been similar to the Roneo copying machine.
A duplicator company in Philadelphia offered a cylinder copying machine in 1905. Duplicate copying was done by running the roller over blank pages. The first commercially successful copying machine was the Gammeter Multigraph and was introduced in America in 1902. The next machine copying form letters with a distinct technology was the Hooven Automatic Typewriter. For quick copying, Multigraph sold a combination of typesetting/printing copying machine. Their ads claimed that Multigraphs copying machines could produce 3,000 to 6,000 pages per hour. The copying machines described above could not be used for copying documents that had been created in the past. Copying such documents began in the 1840s with the development of photosensitive copying paper.
The first experimental photo copying was done in 1938. The xerography copying process was then patented. The first commercially successful copying machine to use this technology was Haloid’s Model A Copier. It was not a plain paper copying machine. The first plain paper office copying machine came in early 1960.Its sales increased rapidly after 1960 and Xerox copying machines quickly became indispensable. The company introduced its first desktop plain paper copier, the Xerox 813 in 1963. The company introduced the Xerox 2400, a large machine that produced 2400 copies an hour in 1965.
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