In 1980, RISO developed a totally new printing system based on an original duplicating technology, “RISOGRAPH”, for the first time in the world and started to market it. Though categorized as a duplicator, a RISOGRAPH-brand printer was easy to operate without requiring any experienced skills and allowed anyone to make a large volume of prints at high speed without smudging hands with ink by applying a full-auto inking mechanism. Besides, images as clear as originals could be reproduced at much lower running cost than required for a copying machine.
Then newspapers reported RISOGRAPH as “a duplicator-like copier”, “an advent of a new-type copier” or “a machine capable of printing on low quality paper in large volume.”
Then, in 1984, RISO launched a full-auto duplicator-printer with a built-in master-making mechanism, “RISOGRAPH 007”, which was the first duplicator without requiring any operations for master loading on a print cylinder. This product commemorated the birth of a printing robot capable of realizing a large-volume print job at high speed and low running cost with as easy operation as on a copier.