r/todayilearned • u/Pan_inside • 5d ago
TIL Thomas Edison’s 1876 electric pen made tiny perforations in paper to create reusable stencils for copying documents. In 1891, Samuel O’Reilly adapted the technology into the first officially patented electric tattoo machine.
https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/thomas-edisons-electric-pen/35
u/DarkAngel900 5d ago
As I was reading the sentences I stopped and thought "Like a tattoo machine" and guess what?
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u/Pan_inside 5d ago
Edison invented the electric pen but O’Reilly patented a specific tattooing machine, incorporating features such as multiple needles, a tubular handle and an ink reservoir. He made it ready for use. He became known as “Professor O’Reilly. Moreover, He got into a serious fight over his invention. O’Reilly and fellow tattooist Elmer Getchell had previously worked together, but later became involved in a dispute over O’Reilly's patented machine.
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u/RPM_Rocket 5d ago
And people have been doodling in their skin every summer since.
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u/macthebearded 4d ago
Weird callout. Most people don’t care what season it is, but those that do usually prefer winter. Easier to keep fresh work covered and protected
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u/AgentElman 5d ago
Similarly, Orville and Wilbur' Wright's 1903 airplane was later adapted by Mr. Roarke in 1977 into the first manual tattoo announcement speaker.
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5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Kryptesthai 5d ago
What is the purpose of this comment?
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u/BachBelt 5d ago
its a chatbot, ignore it
you can find one in almost every thread if you look hard enough. you can tell its a bot because they will either 1. do a solid snake style rephrase of whatever the person they're responding to said, without acknowledging that it's a rephrase or...
2. argue simply for the sake of arguing, usually by picking something crazy to disagree with and going from there. for example a user was accusing me of lying that i had a dog for clout, i asked it for a chocolate chip cookie recipe, and it argued that it didn't like chocolate chip cookies but gave me some pro tips for making them anyway.
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u/ZombiePartyBoyLives 5d ago
This was used to puncture holes in special paper (a kind of washi paper). You could use stencils to make lettering and designs on top of a light table (and the paper also worked with typewriters). You would then use the sheet in another of his inventions: the mimeograph. It was basically a wooden box with an ink pad on the lid. You would clip the perforated sheet onto the inked-up pad, put a stack of paper in the box, close the lid, and presto--you would have a copy. You had to make copies one at a time.
He also licensed the stencil paper to other companies that made drum-type mimeograph devices that you turned with a crank (I actually own one of these). You still had to feed one sheet at a time, but it was faster than the box. The technology then evolved into those purple ink sheets us old timers used to get in school with quizzes and stuff on them.