The duplicator is a device designed to copy documents or media, and its evolution has been closely tied to the development of printing and copying technologies. Before the invention of mechanical duplicators, copying was done by hand or with rudimentary methods like woodblock printing (China, 9th century) or stencils. In the 17th and 18th centuries, methods like letterpress printing allowed multiple copies to be made from a single engraved plate, but these were still slow and limited in scale. The first significant step towards duplicating technology came in 1876 with the invention of the mimeograph by Thomas Edison. The mimeograph allowed for the mass production of documents by creating copies from a stencil that could be inked and pressed onto paper. The mimeograph was widely used in schools, offices, and churches until the 1950s. In 1881, David Gestetner introduced the Gestetner duplicator, a more efficient version of the mimeograph. It used a stencil process and became widely popular in offices and schools for producing multiple copies of documents quickly. The Gestetner duplicator was the dominant technology for document duplication in the early to mid-20th century.