Polygraph (duplicating device)

The Jefferson polygraph ( Polygraph from Greek: poly = πολύς much more; γραφή graph = writing) is a mechanical apparatus that took advantage of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson to the reproduction of written documents directly in the drafting.

Function

When he in 1804 by the inventor John Isaac Hawkins apparatus, which also gave her the name was given, he should have called it "the finest invention of the present age" ( the most successful invention of this age ). The polygraph had two or more pens that simultaneously moved to the writing movement of the hand and anfertigten an exact copy of the written word. As the clerk so had to be present in person still here, this was no longer necessary in the more than 150 years later autopen used for representing the signature.

Name

Polygraph you originally denoted a prolific writer, an often used in disparaging sense expression for the author of a large number of books .. In later lexicons ( Meyers 1905, Brockhaus 1911) the name is also associated with a peculiarly constructed ( n ) copying machine in connection.