Mimeograph
In 1876 Thomas Edison was given a patent for the mimeograph - which would relieve the world from the small-press-run publication. The mimeograph machine came before the modern printers that we use today and were used everywhere in offices, schools, and even the military.
If you needed just a few copies of a document, you used carbon paper. If you needed thousands (and had the time and the budget), you could send it to a print shop for typesetting and publication. But if you needed something in between, say 30 copies for a classroom handout or 500 or 1,000 for a church bulletin or incendiary revolutionary poster, you had the mimeograph.
The process is simple; cut a stencil, push ink through the holes onto paper, and repeat. The business model is also simple: Sell the machine, sell the stencils, sell the ink, maybe even sell the paper, but there might be competition there. Edison’s 1876 patent covered a flatbed duplicating press and an electric pen for cutting stencils. Chicago inventor Albert Blake Dick improved the stencils while experimenting with wax paper and merged his efforts with Edison’s. The A.B. Dick Co. released the Model 0 Flatbed Duplicator in 1887. It sold for $12 ($270 in today’s money).
If you didn’t want to use the electric pen, you could try cutting a stencil with one of those newfangled typewriters. But hand drawing of stencils persisted well into the 20th century for diagrams of sentences and diagrams of scientific concepts, as well as mathematical formulas that were beyond the scope of the typewriter keyboard.
Later models replaced Edison’s original flatbed press and hand roller for the ink with a rotating cylinder and an automatic feed from the ink reservoir. Deluxe models included an electric motor. You could also get cheaper ones that you had to crank by hand.