David Gestetner

David Gestetner (31 March 18548 March 1939) was the inventor of the Gestetner stencil duplicator, the first piece of office equipment that allowed production of numerous copies of documents quickly and inexpensively. He also invented a new kind of nail clipper. Gestetner was awarded the John Scott Medal by The Franklin Institute in 1888. On 12 March 2011 a Blue Plaque was placed on his home at 124 Highbury New Park in north London. Early life The devoutly Jewish David Gestetner left Hungary to work in Vienna in the 1870s, where he began work at the stock exchange. One of his tasks was to make copies of the activity at the end of the day by repeatedly handwriting the results. He decided to try to find a better method, and his experiments eventually led him to invent the first method of reproducing documents by use of a stencil. He went on to work in Chicago, making kites out of Chinese paper. Gestetner allegedly perceived the idea of the duplicating method after an ink-spill accident whilst vending kites in Chicago. After a pot of ink spilled over a pile of kites, he found that the same ink pattern remained throughout the pile. This inspired him to find a way to replicate the process for commercial use. Gestetner then moved to London, United Kingdom to produce his inventions and went on to achieve great commercial success.