Thomas Edison's

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

 electric pen, part of a complete outfit for duplicating handwritten documents and drawings, was the first relatively safe electric motor driven office appliance

Small appliance

Small appliance refers to a class of home appliances that are portable or semi-portable or which are used on tabletops, countertops, or other platforms in the United States of America...

 produced and sold in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Development

The electric pen was developed as an offshoot of Edison's telegraphy

Telegraphy

Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages via some form of signalling technology. Telegraphy requires messages to be converted to a code which is known to both sender and receiver...

 research. Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

 and Charles Batchelor

Charles Batchelor

Charles W. Batchelor was an inventor and close associate of American inventor Thomas Alva Edison during much of Edison’s career. He was involved in some of the greatest inventions and technological developments in history....

 noticed that as the stylus

Stylus

A stylus is a writing utensil, or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example in pottery. The word is also used for a computer accessory . It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen. Many styli are heavily curved to be held more easily...

 of their printing telegraph punctured the paper, the chemical solution left a mark underneath. This led Edison to conceive in June 1875 the idea of using a perforated sheet of paper as a stencil for making multiple copies, and to develop the electric pen as a perforating device. Later duplicating processes used a wax stencil, but the instruction manuals for Edison's Electric(al) Pen and Duplicating Press variously call for a stencil of "common writing paper" (in Charles Batchelor's manual), and Crane's Bank Folio paper (in George Bliss' later manual). US patent 1800,857 for autographic printing was issued to Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

 in 1876, covering the pen, the duplication press, and accessories.

Design and use

The electric pen was the key component of a complete duplicating system, which included the pen, a cast-iron holder with a wooden insert, a wet-cell battery on a cast-iron stand, and a cast-iron flatbed duplicating press with ink roller. All the cast-iron parts were black japanned, with gold striping or decoration. The hand-held electric pen was powered by a wet cell battery, which was wired to an electric motor

Electric motor

An electric motor converts electrical energy into mechanical energy.Most electric motors operate through the interaction of magnetic fields and current-carrying conductors to generate force...

 mounted on top of a pen-like shaft. The motor drove a reciprocating needle which, according to the manual, could make 50 punctures per second, or 3,000 per minute. The user was instructed to place the stencil on firm blotting paper

Blotting paper

Blotting 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. It is also commonly used as a beauty tool to absorb excess oil from the skin.-Manufacture:Blotting paper is made from different...

 on a flat surface, then use the pen to write or draw naturally to form words and designs as a series of minute perforations in the stencil.

Once the stencil

Stencil

A stencil is a thin sheet of material, such as paper, plastic, 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. The key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to...

 was prepared it was placed in the flatbed duplicating press with a blank sheet of paper below. An inked roller was passed over the stencil, leaving an impression of the image on the paper. Edison boasted that over 5,000 copies could be made from one stencil. The electric pen proved ultimately unsuccessful, other simpler methods (and eventually the typewriter

Typewriter

A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...

) succeeding it for cutting stencils, but Edison licensed his duplicating technology to A.B. Dick, who sold it as Edison's Mimeograph with considerable success. The A.B. Dick Company

A.B. Dick Company

The A. B. Dick Company was a major American manufacturer of copy machines and office supplies in the late 19th Century and the 20th Century.The company was founded in 1883 in Chicago as a lumber company by Albert Blake Dick...

 continued in business as an office products and equipment manufacturer until 2004, when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and its assets were purchased by Presstek

Presstek

Presstek manufactures and markets digital offset printing solutions. Headquartered in Hudson, New Hampshire, Presstek sells offset presses, computer-to-plate systems, and chemistry-free printing plates, as well as prepress consumables. In 2004, Presstek purchased the financially troubled A.B. Dick...

, a manufacturer of prepress

Prepress

Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing industries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing...

products.