Some players have complained about pre-duplicated hands since they first started appearing at national tournaments. The methods were fairly primitive in 1955.
Pre-duplication at that time was done by hand by a non-bridge player. It was said that the pre-duper did not know the difference between the ace of spades and an elephant’s ear. The method employed was to deal a hand with an old deck of cards, record it, shuffle the deck several times with a riffle shuffle and then deal the next hand one card at a time.