Dick, A. B.

Dick, A. B. (Albert Blake)

(1856–1934) inventor, businessman; born in Bureau County, Ill. An agricultural implements salesman, in 1884 he opened a lumber company in Chicago. To ease the paperwork involved with inventorying stock, he invented a method for duplicating originals called the "autographic stencil." He sold the lumber yard in 1887 to collaborate with Thomas Edison in the invention of the Edison-Dick mimeograph. The A. B. Dick Company devoted all its resources to improving the machine; by the time of his death the mimeograph machine was almost entirely automatic and it dominated the field of office copying until the introduction of the xerographic process.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.