Spirit Duplicator


A spirit duplicator (also referred to as a Ditto machine in North America, Banda machine in the UK or Roneo in France and Australia) was a printing method invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld and commonly used for much of the rest of the 20th century. The term “spirit duplicator” refers to the alcohols which were a major component of the solvents used as “inks” in these machines. The device coexisted alongside the mimeograph. 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 correspondingly low quality of copying. (Wikipedia)