#Mimeograph August 22

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August 2026 several of us are going to take on the 30-Day Plugged in Coach4aday Challenge. Each day, we will feature an item from home or office that requires being plugged into a source of electricity to operate. We will reflect on how it makes life easier. For Day 22 it is the MIMEOGRAPH.

If you were in school during the 1960s, you may remember the front office having a mimeograph machine. Some schools also used a spirit duplicator, which served a similar purpose but used a different copying process. Both machines were familiar sights in schools and produced the worksheets, announcements, and handouts that were part of everyday school life.

Spirit Duplicator

The copies always smelled so good. Maybe the reason was that the solvent was alcohol based.

Day 22-Mimeograph

The mimeograph grew out of a stencil-copying process developed in the late 19th century. Thomas Edison patented an early electric stencil duplicating machine in 1876, called the Electric Pen. It used an electrically powered stylus to create a stencil, but it wasn’t the mimeograph machine we would recognize today.

Albert Blake Dick licensed Edison’s technology and developed the Edison Mimeograph, which he introduced commercially in 1887. Early mimeographs were hand-operated: the user turned a crank to rotate the drum and produce copies.

Video Clip

When did electricity power the mimeograph?

Electric motors were added to mimeograph machines in the early 20th century, but there wasn’t one specific year when they suddenly became electric. By the 1920s and 1930s, electrically powered duplicators were increasingly available, particularly in businesses, schools, and government offices.