Spirit duplicator

Common card · No. 260636

A spirit duplicator (also Rexograph and Ditto machine in North America, Banda machine and Fordigraph machine in the U.K. and Australia) is a printer invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld, which was used for most of the 20th century. "Spirit" here refers to the alcohols that were the principal solvents used in generating copies. Spirit duplicators were used mainly by schools, churches, clubs, and other small organizations, such as in the production of fanzines, because of the limited number of copies one could make from an original, along with the low cost of copying. The spirit duplicator was most popular in the same period as the mimeograph and the hectograph.

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