
The Gestetner is a type of
duplicating machine named after its inventor,
David Gestetner (1854–1939). During the 20th century, the term ''Gestetner'' was 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 1995, the Gestetner company was acquired by the
Ricoh
is a Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company. It was founded by the now-defunct commercial division of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) known as the ''Riken Concern'', on 6 February 1936 as . Ricoh's hea ...
Corporation of Japan.
History
David Gestetner was born in Hungary in 1854, and after working in Vienna and New York, he moved to
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, England, filing his first copying
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
there in 1879.
A later patent in 1881 was for the
Cyclostyle, a stylus that was part of the Cyclograph copying device.
[ That same year, he also established the Gestetner Cyclograph Company to produce duplicating machines, stencils, styli, ink rollers and related products. The Gestetner works opened in 1906 at ]Tottenham Hale
Tottenham Hale is a district of north London and part of the London Borough of Haringey, bounded by the River Lea and located to the south/south-east of Tottenham proper. From 1850 to 1965, it was part of the Municipal Borough of Tottenham, in Mi ...
, north London
North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames and the City of London. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshi ...
, and employed several thousand people until the 1990s. Gestetner's inventions were successful, and branch offices sold and serviced Gestetner products in 153 different countries.
The Gestetner Company expanded quickly during the early and mid-20th century. Management was passed to David Gestetner's son, Sigmund Gestetner, and from him to his sons, David and Jonathan. Gestetner acquired other companies during the years: Nashua (later changed to Nashuatec), Rex Rotary, Hanimex and Savin.
In 1995 the international Gestetner Company, and its brand, was acquired by the Ricoh
is a Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company. It was founded by the now-defunct commercial division of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) known as the ''Riken Concern'', on 6 February 1936 as . Ricoh's hea ...
company of Japan. The company was renamed NRG Group PLC, and markets and services Ricoh products under its three main brand names, primarily in Europe, South Africa and the Middle East, but also through dealers throughout the world. In Europe, Gestetner Group became NRG Group, which on 1 April 2007 became Ricoh Europe. On that date Ricoh merged its Gestetner dealer network with the Lanier dealer network that had been selling Lanier-branded products on behalf of Ricoh for the North American market. Ricoh indicated that the merger's rationale was based on the fact that both "Gestetner and Lanier brands have been marketing identical products for many years". Thus, Gestetner's American customers can simply substitute Lanier-branded products for previous Gestetner-branded products even though Lanier-branded products are the same as Ricoh and Savin.["Notice for Gestetner Customers," April 2, 2007]
Gestetner USA website
(Retrieved April 28, 2009.)
The Gestetner Cyclograph
The Gestetner Cyclograph was a stencil-method duplicator that used a thin sheet of paper coated with wax (originally kite
A kite is a tethered heavier than air flight, heavier-than-air craft with wing surfaces that react against the air to create Lift (force), lift and Drag (physics), drag forces. A kite consists of wings, tethers and anchors. Kites often have ...
paper was used), which was written upon with a special stylus
A stylus is a writing utensil or tool for scribing or marking into softer materials. Different styluses were used to write in cuneiform by pressing into wet clay, and to scribe or carve into a wax tablet. Very hard styluses are also used to En ...
that left a broken line through the stencil, removing the paper's wax coating. Ink was forced through the stencil (originally by an ink roller), and it left its impression on a white sheet of paper.
Until this time, any "short copy runs" which were needed for the conduct of a business—e.g., for the production of 10–50 copies of contracts, agreements, or letters—had to be copied by hand. (If more were needed, the document would have to go to the printers.) After the run had been copied, business partners had to read each one to ensure that they were all exactly the same, and that human error had not resulted in any aberrant copies. The process was time-consuming and frustrating. The stencil-copy method meant that only one copy had to be read, as all copies were mechanically identical. Gestetner had therefore revolutionised the office copying process.
Gestetner developed his invention, with the stencil eventually being placed on a screen wrapped around a pair of revolving drums, onto which ink was placed. The drums were revolved and ink, spread evenly across the surface of the screen by a pair of cloth-covered rollers, was forced through the cuts made in the stencil and transferred onto a sheet of paper which was fed through the duplicator and pressed by pressure rollers against the lower drum. Each complete rotation of the screen fed and printed one sheet. Later models had a scanner, that scanned an original and burned holes through the "master" as it spun on a spinning drum.
Model 66 was perhaps the most famous Gestetner machine, designed by Raymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy ( , ; November 5, 1893 – July 14, 1986) was a French-born American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries. He was recognized for this by ''Time'' magazi ...
; examples are currently housed in the British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
and Churchill's War Bunker in Whitehall.
After the first typewriter
A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...
was invented, a stencil was created which could be typed on, thus creating copies similar to printed newspapers and books, instead of handwritten material.
See also
* Cyclostyle (copier)
*Mimeograph
A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo, sometimes called a stencil duplicator or stencil machine) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process is called mimeography, and a co ...
*Photocopier
A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...
*Spirit duplicator
A spirit duplicator (also Rexograph and Ditto machine in North America, Banda machine and Fordigraph machine in the U.K. and Australia) is a printing method invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld, which was used for most of the 20th century. Th ...
* Thermofax
References
External links
*
Gestetner official website
*
{{Ricoh
Office equipment
Printing press manufacturers
Defunct companies based in London
Defunct manufacturing companies of England
Manufacturing companies based in London
Manufacturing companies established in 1881
Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2007
1881 establishments in England
2007 disestablishments in England
Printing technology
Ricoh acquisitions
Ricoh
1995 mergers and acquisitions