Ditto Machines

[michaelman2]

I used to have a fixation on Ditto (spirit duplicator) machines. Every once in a while one will pop up on Ebay and there will be a jillion bids for it. Anyone else miss these fun machines? I had one as a kid and killed more trees (reams of paper) duplicating/running off every inane thing I could conjure. I know that tattoo artists use the spirit masters for their work. I am in the process of planning my HS class reunion and would like to do the program on a Ditto machine. Just the smell would bring back memories for everyone.

 

[iheartmaytag]

With cheap copy machines, the ditto machine was kind of pushed out. But I do love the smell of fresh off the machine ditto copies.

 

[thomasortega]

It reminds me my school days...

 

[rp2813]

Ah, the smell of Ditto in the morning!  Or anytime!

 

I didn't even realize you could get Ditto masters or paper anymore.

 

I would love to have a Ditto machine!  Hand crank preferred!

 

Good luck!  Your classmates will get a big kick out of it if you can pull this off!

 

[amyswasher]

Sha-Shink, Sha-Shink ahhh the old days.

 

[thomasortega]

Here the paper can be found almost everywhere and it costs no more than a few cents.

 

[labboy]

Gestetner...

At my elementary school we had hand crank machines then later a Gestetner electric machine. I had an after school job in the office and would help run copies. I'm sure they would never be allowed in schools now with the solvents they used. The completed copies would feel very cool as the remaining solvent evaporated off.

 

[lordkenmore]

<span style="font-family: courier new,courier; font-size: large; color: #b04fb0;">I have at least a bit of fixation on Ditto machines, too. I saw plenty of Dittos in school. My father had access to a Ditto machine, and he'd sometimes run off stuff for home. Not much, but when something like a supply of check lists in a board game ran out, he'd make replacements, rather than buying the official game manufacturer part.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: courier new,courier; font-size: large; color: #b04fb0;">I like the idea of running of the reunion bulletins using a Ditto machine. If a real machine doesn't turn up, you could probably create a replica, similar to what I did with this post (purple print, monospace font like Courier, possibly even find an "old, worn manual typewriter" font).</span>

<span style="font-family: courier new,courier; font-size: large; color: #b04fb0;">"I'm sure they would never be allowed in schools now with the solvents they used."</span>

<span style="font-family: courier new,courier; font-size: large; color: #b04fb0;">Probably not. I can't say for sure, but I've heard of schools banning Ditto machines for this reason. Although it was probably irrelevant--by that point, photocopy had taken over.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: courier new,courier; font-size: large; color: #b04fb0;"> </span>

 

[michaelman2]

John/LordKenmore.you are too funny...that color you used in the post is a very close replica of the Ditto /Spirit Duplicator color. An aniline dye was used for the masters (stencil).

The Gestetner machines were actually very high end Mimeograph machines.

Mimeograph used ink as opposed to the master units that Ditto/Spirit Duplicators used. A.B.Dick manufactured several types of duplicators including; Spirit, Mimeo and Photo...they continue to produce printers, photo, and offset.

The solvent was simply a wood grain alcohol that would lightly moisten the paper as it passed over the wick on the machine. The dye from the master would then be pressed against the moistened paper and thus the transfer or copy would be done.

I think at one time there was a concern as to the inhalation of the fluid but really I think that was a bit of hysteria. I just found out that these machines are still used in areas where there is little electric power. I know that aboard Naval vessels the duplicators are still there for back up.

My assistant was formerly an English teacher (actually my 8th grade English teacher) and I have jokingly told her that we are going back to 1978 (my 8th grade year) and we will once again use Ditto machines........you guys should have seen the look on her face as she peered down over her glasses!

 

[lordkenmore]

With Ditto, you can potentially use the process without a machine by dampening the paper with alcohol, and pressing it against the master. I did this years back, just to see if it would work. No guarantees it'll always work--all I can say for sure is that it worked the time I tried it. Plus, I suspect that a machine would probably work better and have longer master life. But it was an interesting experiment.

With Mimeograph, it's worth noting that--as I understand it--it not only uses ink, but the master is actually a stencil. Advantage is much better life. I'm not sure what Ditto can do--I suppose it depends on the master brand, how it's run off, etc--but a hundred copies or so is probably the best you can hope for. But Mimeograph was apparently harder to correct, and I was told it could be quite messy. My memory from school was that Mimeograph was always handled by a secretary, possibly because of the mess, but teachers would use the Ditto machines themselves.

And Mike, if you think your old teacher was shocked by your news, try telling someone who is too young to remember when Ditto was king. Back in the 90s, I wanted to run something off for a bunch of people who'd remember the technology. I remembered a local college library that a Ditto machine only a few years before. It was, as I best recalled, available for public use. Figuring that they might still have the machine, I stopped by one night and asked. The 20 or so year old clerk had never heard of the machine. I explained the technology. He said they had nothing like that anymore. Then he started asking me questions if the thing actually worked, and if it wasn't horribly slow. I left that question and answer session feeling old!

 

[dirtybuck]

Like a few other posters, I distinctly remember the Ditto machine from my grade school years. I can still see Mrs. White, the principals secretary, moving the machine out into the hallway and hand cranking that monster over and over.

And yes, the ink did have a nice smell to it.

 

[rp2813]

Oh yes, definitely it was easier to fix a mistake on a Ditto master.  I remember using a plain No. 2 pencil for that job, but it was by no means a perfect fix.

 

The mimeograph master, as I recall, was entirely unforgiving.  I think that's another reason why the secretaries would handle those.  Accuracy was paramount. 

 

My typing teacher also taught Spanish.  I think he had access to mimeo masters as a result.  I'd help him with stuff and would sometimes type up Ditto masters, but I left the mimeos up to him.

 

Which reminds me.  If I ever got my hands on a Ditto machine, I'd also have to find myself a typewriter.  I don't own one anymore.

 

 

 

[lordkenmore]

"If I ever got my hands on a Ditto machine, I'd also have to find myself a typewriter."

You could also handwrite with a ballpoint pen. I remember some teachers did that--particularly math teachers (possibly because it was easier than typing equations).

Another option might be an older dot matrix printer or daisy wheel printer. I remember one teacher doing this. His handouts were lighter than what a typed master might do, but were still readable.

It also seems to me there was some device that could take something printed in normal black and white and turn it into a Ditto master.

 

[joelippard]

A.B Dick was "the" company! I remember watching almost transfixed at the old A.B Dick Offset Press at the church as the newsletters were being ran on it. God I love the way it sounded, so mechanical, and very high quality printing. I used to love to turn the hand wheel on the front of it.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I was fascinated to find that there was a way to use different color inks on some Ditto masters so that you could have diagrams with several different colors in them, but I did not ever see the special masters close up to figure out how they were done. I wonder if our couple of generations ruined our livers with the fumes of that alcohol? Of course, aniline dyes are pretty toxic in their own right. I wonder if the purple you could get on your skin carried the toxicity of the dye into the body? A.B. Dick; never any question as to what the intitals stood for after 5th or 6th grade back then. Today they are familiar with the work "dick" in kindergarten.

I do remember the big upgrade when our elementary school stepped up to an electrically powered Ditto machine. Then the office person could start it up and walk away. I don't know if it could be set to shut off after a set number of copies had been made. I know it must have been easier on the secretary with all of those tests and worksheets, etc.

It just seems like there must be some Ditto machines in office surplus warehouses or government surplus warehouses. There are probably a lot of them in the turd world where there is limited electricity.

I remember how quickly the mimeo master, which could almost qualify as eternal next to a ditto master, gained popularity. Teachers could type up material and be able to use it for years. Then there was some process, using a Thermofax machine, where they could "burn" a master just by sending it through the machine and letting the heat do the work. I was not involved in that end of it when I worked as a stupid assistant in college; I just ran the ditto and mimeo machines, helped with labs and fed and cleaned up after the animals (the ones in cages and tanks) not the ones in the classroom. We had a notoriously troubled teacher at my high school who was an alcoholic and when she got a hold of those mimeo masters that could be burned, she took all of the tests out of teachers' editions of World History and American History texts and had the masters burned then run off as our tests. You might encounter the same question on several different pages of the tests and they were thick monsters. She felt that what she could not offer in quality she could compensate for with quantity. One year at the assembly for the presentation of the new annual, skits were performed to parody various teachers. I remember this student with a gray wig and a small pillow under her belt carrying an armfull of Atlanta phone directories that ran between 2 and 2.5 inches thick and handing them out to students. Come to think of it, there were no more skits after that year. Oh well.

Whenever I went to a new office I always heard the nightmare noir story of the girl who did not adequately close the opening in the ink reservoir before starting the mimeo machine and had it slinging that horrid thick black ink all over the room.

The first Xerox machine we students had access to was in our jr. college library. It was about the size of a double bed and copies cost a dime in the years 68-70.

 

[michaelman2]

Correct, a Mimeograph stencil was actually "cut"...hence the reason on typewriters there was a "stencil setting" where the ribbon would not interfere with the cutting of the wax impregnated paper. The stencil was placed on the drum of the machine where an ink laden pad would lie. The ink was forced through the cut stencil as it was pressed against the paper.

The Ditto machine/Spirit Duplicator was similar in appearance but no ink was used only fluid with the typical purple master.

Yes, you could get different colors to use on the spirit masters and it was used at times. You could also do different colors on a Mimeograph if you were skilled at inking the pad correctly.

Both machines fell out of favor once photo copiers became more popular.The photocopier is still more expensive to use, but less preparation for a run.

You could hand write on BOTH a Mimeo stencil as well as a spirit master. The Mimeo stencil typically had to use a special stylus, but a ball point pen would suffice. The spirit master a ball point pen was fine. Both liked a firm typewriter. They both could also use a printer, such as dot matrix.

Yes, I also do know how old I felt a few years ago when my son was a senior in HS. He came home, empty handed (as usual) and I told him "look, I know the teacher gave you a Ditto on that"....he said "What?"..."What did she give me?"....I immediately corrected myself even dating myself further and said " I know she gave you a mimeographed sheet on that"...."Huh?"...."TRENT, I know she gave you a Xerox copy"...."Dad, I don't know what in the world you are talking about".....I finally got across to him what I meant..........but it really dated me.

 

[cornutt]

Back in the mid-70s, I had a summer job running an offset machine. They had a way of preparing offset masters from typed or handwritten pages. They made a photocopy (the old-style wet photocopy process) using a special paper that was pink, and rather thick. You made the copy onto the pink paper, then you had to run it through a wringer-like assembly that applied a viscous, fluorescent green stuff to it. The master came out feeling slimy. The green stuff soaked into the paper wherever the copier had not deposited any carbon black, and became the resist for the offset ink. You then mounted the master onto the master drum of the offset machine, and fired it up.

Offset actually made good quality copies when ran by a skilled operator. The big problem with it is that, unless you're running a huge number of copies (thousands), it's extremely slow because after every page, you have to stop the machine and scrub the ink off the rubber blanket. And the solvent you need to do that with is nasty stuff, like naptha or dry cleaning fluid.

 

[rp2813]

I don't think my other Spanish teacher knew how to type.  Everything she did on Ditto was hand-written in perfect cursive.

 

[sudsmaster]

Ah, yes, the memories

Back in 1968 some high school friends and I got together and produced an underground newspaper. I remember that I typed up most of it in Pica on my desktop Smith-Corona manual typewriter - which worked very well, wish I still had it. One of the group had his mom run them off on the ditto machine. We included original stories, original artwork (one who did it is now a successful commercial artist) and for some reason we also included a gen-u-ine "Creepy Crawlie" with each issue.

It was sort of nerdy witty with a sly sophistication.

I saved one copy and it's still in my file cabinet here. As a whim I ran off some photocopies and sent them on to those in the group that I still keep track of. They were somewhat speechless ;-).