• Boulton's copying machine

In the late 18th century, the Birmingham manufacturer Boulton experimented with a chemical process of inks which would impress a second page; you may see one at his home Soho House in Birmingham. 

The Soho House website / 'Leisure and Tourism' / 'Museums and Heritage' / 'Historic Buildings'

Look at the links to sites on the Lunar Society - a society of scientists in the Midlands, of which he was a member.

• Jefferson's copying machine

The American statesman Jefferson experimented with a mechanical process of pens linked together by levers which wrote two texts at the same time; you may see one such mechanism at his home in Monticello (Virginia, built in the late 18th and early 19th c.).

This is a way of imitating the movement of the arm; it is the same process as that of the pantograph used by draughtsmen to duplicate or enlarge drawings.

The Monticello website, House Tour/cabinet

a pantograph, from Diderot's Encyclopédie