Thomas Edison, an inventor as well as a businessman, is credited with many inventions including the motion picture camera, the phonograph, and the light bulb. In fact, Edison holds 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, not including the patents he has in the UK, France, and Germany. He began his experiments while working as a telegraph operator and continued to test his inventive ideas throughout his life.

It was on this day, August 8, 1876, that Thomas Edison patented the mimeograph. It is a device that works by forcing into through a stencil onto paper and is also known as the stencil duplicator. His patent covers the flatbed duplicating process as well as the electric pen that makes up the stencil. Edison took it one step further and also acquired a patent for the “Method of Preparing Autographic Stencils for Printing.”

Mimeographs were used to print classroom materials, office materials, and church bulletins. As technology advanced, photocopying and other printing methods became much more popular, but the mimeograph is a machine still used today. They are an efficient, cheap, and can be hand-cranked.