Thomas Alva Edison’s electric pen is born: a battery-powered stylus with a needle that quickly moves up and down thanks to an electromagnetic motor. This motor makes it pierce a sheet of template paper in a continuous line, allowing the operator to write or draw. The resulting template is then mounted and pressed onto white paper, and the roller is coated with ink to produce as many copies as desired. It’s a somewhat awkward tool to use and requires considerable skill, but it sells 60,000 units in ten years. It’s also the first consumer product to use an electric motor, as well as the first duplicator for large-scale production.
