Duplicating machines
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Duplicating machines were the predecessors of modern document-reproduction technology. They have now mostly been replaced by digital duplicators, scanners, laser printers, and photocopiers, but for ma
One of the polygraphs used by Thomas Jefferson, a portable version
A James Watt & Co. copying press, in Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum.
Iron letter copying press, late 19th century, Germany
The Rapid Roller Damp-Leaf Copier in use
James Watt
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James Watt was a Scottish inventor, engineer and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fundamental to the changes brought b
Duplicating machines
…Hawkins & Peale lost money producing polygraphs. The problem was their "inherent instability, and constant need for repair and adjustment." In 1780 James Watt obtained a patent for letter copying presses, which James Watt & Co. produced beginning in that year. Letter copying presses were used by the early…
Portrait by Carl Frederik von Breda, 1792
Statue of Watt (Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, by Francis Chantrey)
James Watt by John Partridge, after Sir William Beechey (1806)
Bust of Watt in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery