Know as "DG" throughout his life, David Gestetner was born in Csorna, Hungary in 1854. His innovations in office copying machinery changed the landscape of the business and finance industries, effectively heralding the beginning of the modern office and the demise of the City clerk, whose main function was to copy documents by hand.
DG was born into a Jewish family, and remained devout throughout his life. In the 1870s, after spending a short time in the United States, he joined a firm in Vienna making hectographs - a primitive apparatus for copying documents. It was here that DG first began to develop his ideas to improve copying methods. In 1879 he moved to the London and took his talents to the stationery firm Fairholme & Co. DG applied for the first of his many patents later that year.
DG's single most important breakthrough came in 1881 with the invention of the 'Cyclostyle'; a pen with a tiny sharp-toothed rotating wheel that was used to make a perforated stencil, through which ink was forced to make copies. A trained operator could produce a good-quality copy every ten seconds, and the innovation soon transformed clerical work. Gestetner started production in the same year initially under the name 'The Cyclostyle Company'. Further patents followed, including the application of 'cyclostyling' to typewriter technology.
By 1900 Gestetner was employing a hundred people at a factory in Cross Street, Islington. As the company grew and employed more people the factory moved to Tottenham in 1907 and remained open until the 1980s. In 1922 Gestetner went public with a share capital of £750,000.
DG made London his home and spent most of his life in the city. The villa at 124 Highbury New Park, Islington, which will bear his plaque dates from around 1860. It was his family home from 1898 until his death in 1939. Known as Norselands during his period of residence, DG lived there with his wife Sophie, née Lazarus, and their seven children, of whom his only son Sigmund succeeded him.
DG also lived for at least a dozen years in nearby Ferntower Road. His forty-one years at 124 Highbury New Park encompassed many key moments in the development of his business, including the important twin rotary patent of 1901 and the incorporation and public flotation of his company. At the time of DG's death in 1939, the firm employed 6,000 people and it remained in family ownership until the 1980s, based latterly at Tottenham Hale.