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The DAVID GESTETNER 1857-1939 Though the industry he founded spread to every continent on the globe and nearly every country, this Yeshiva-educated man never became too sophisticated for his religion. Until his death, he remained a strict Sabbath observer and his factory facilities were always closed on Shabbat and on the Yomtifs. GESTETNER Story Persistence and inventiveness brought rewards which revolutionized business office techniques and built an industry. by ADOLPH ROSENBERG Hungary and Japan, thousands of miles apart, came together fig uratively one day in 1875 on a seamy street of New York. And at this moment in the shape of a hungry youth and a flying kite there emerged the be ginning of a revolution in busi ness office technique, the material ization of an idea which in time was to change the face of busi ness communication. Literally, the fabric of the mul berry paper used in the flying toy formed the basis of an industry which has today been parlayed into a multi-million-dollar con cern. The lad’s name was David Gestetner who pioneered the field of office duplicating machines. Like so many accounts of the early days of an industry, the Gestetner story did not suddenly spring into being at this particu lar moment in 1875 as though there had been nothing before. The year 1875 was not Act. 1, Scene 1. But this particular time was the moment when the fortuitous strands of episodes came together and within the inventive mind of this Jewish youth were tied to gether to create the strong idea with which to pull forward with progress. One strand in the story goes far back into Chinese history where paper was first invented as early as 200 years A.D., coiling around the globe with the centuries until it became the standard basis for the momentous discovery of print ing. Segments of the strand reach ed far into Oriental development when the making of paper spread in the slow inter-culturation of the Far East to Japan. Another aspect of the events which came together in 1875 cer tainly has antecedents in Europe where the Gestetner family found haven in Austria, probably in the Haskalic release of Jews from the narrow confines of ghettoes. Other strands are connected di rectly with the development of the printing process itself, which had its impact on young Gestetner, educated at the Yeshiva to Press- burg in the old Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1870, at the age of 13, David 1 -ft school for the Hungarian vil lage of Csorna to help his uncle and aunt make sausages. Three years later, he was in Vienna working for another of his uncles, as a stockbrokers’s clerk. It was not the most adventurous trade available to young men. Six teen was hardly the age at which investment acumen was permit ted. Ahead lay many years of ap prenticeship before such responsi bility could be claimed and dem onstrated. Meanwhile, David’s task was as a junior clerk, whose chief as signment was the laborious copy ing of business documents. Slow and tedious, laborious, monotonous % - A K J y David Gestetner and one of the early models of his office machine. 22 The Southern Israelite