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A spirit duplicator (also referred to as a Rexograph or Ditto machine in North America, Banda machine or Fordigraph machine in the U.K. and Australia) is a printing method invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld that was commonly used for much of the rest of the 20th century. The term "spirit duplicator" refers to the alcohols that were a major component of the solvents used in these machines.[1][2][3]
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 (and corresponding low quality) of copying.
The spirit duplicator coexisted alongside the mimeograph and the hectograph, devices with a similar purpose but different operation.