Ditto / Mimeograph Machines

[bostonwash]

We had one of these at our elementary school

It was gray. and you turned the handle which made one copy per turn.
And then if you made repeated copies of copies you would get major blurring or it wouldn't be straight.
But it worked.

 

[jasonl]

Sounds like the stencil would move around and cause it to blur.

Hand cranked... no way. Ours was electric. Flip a lever and stand clear.

 

[Maytagmom]

Comfessions of a Former Paper Sniffer....

Guilty!!!
Loved the smell of those copies too while in school.
It was just an automatic thing to sniff those papers when the teacher handed them out....EVERYONE did it!

I also remember making stencil copies and loading them on a huge gutenburg? (sp?) press, when I worked for Tupperware back in the 70's, for their monthly newletters to the managers in the Houston area.

Of course...sniffing the paper in school, lead to me doing harder things later....LMAO...

J/K!!! let's not *go* there...LOL

 

[tomturbomatic]

The Ditto Masters would eventually run out of the purple ink on the printing side, but some teachers KEPT those nasty Mimeograph stencils in file folders and the same handouts and tests were "run off" every quarter or year. Also, Ditto-produced copies would fade over the years, but Mimeograph copies pretty much held up. I remember getting Ditto handouts where there must have been too much alcohol, because they were blurry, just like vision when a people has too much alcohol.

Our elementary school "movie" projectors were hand threaded with little spring closer covers on the sprockets (remember Spacely Sprockets?) that you mashed in at the top to open them and if the film was even slightly off, the sound was distorted terribly. That led to all of the false starts and calls for the lights. The real fun came when the film was over. Then you pressed a release to raise the rear take-up reel and threaded the film onto the original reel, but up high over the top of the projector. It was neat to watch the film flying between the two reels and diminishing on one and growing on the other. You wanted to anticipate the end to avoid too much of the flap-flap-flap sound when the film left the back reel. And the mess you had if someone had returned the film with a break in it. The take-up reel would keep turning, but the film running through the sprockets would jump the track and start pooling down and the teacher would jump up and immediately call for lights. There would be an awful commotion.

Our slide projectors were gray and the slides traveled in and out from the side. We even had some that did not have the magazine and each slide was placed in the holder and carefully pushed in and pulled out so that there was no jamming. And now there are no more Kodak Carousels being made any more. I guess "slides" are like records and when we grow old and people go through our stuff, it will all be obsolete except for the few people with an interest in old things, sorta like us. There was an intersting projector made just as I left my second year of college that used a slide that consisted of a transparency in the middle with a circular recording surface around it and the narration could be recorded by the instructor for independent study. Our really up to the minute on any technology biology and botany professor showed me one of the slides just before I left. I was one of the student assistants in the science department and had all sorts of neat things to do and got to do all sorts of neat things.

 

[zzzzz]

Mimeos and Dittos and 16mm, oh my!

While you can do a lot more with a Mac and a laser printer these days, nothing beat that certain je ne sais quoi of handouts fresh from a spirit duplicator, not to mention the fun of making Ditto masters. (I'm wondering whether masters and fluid are still being made for spirit duplicators, just in case there are collectors out there that want to show off their still-functional vintage machines.)

Oh, and about those Hell and Bowell Autoshredders: I never liked those machines. Look at them the wrong way and they'll eat film for lunch. The only "real" 16mm projectors, IMHO, were manual-threading, and unless you mastered the bass-ackward threading of a Kalart-Victor projector, you've haven't reached the pinnacle of A-V geekdom.

 

[cadman]

You guys are fun!

My favorite 16mm projector would have to be the B&H 2580 - The convenience of an autoload without having to square the film and and insert it (and risk chewing it all to pieces). Just throw a lever on the side, pull the film around the lens, attach it to the reel, throw the lever back and turn the machine on. Check the link to see what I mean : )

I actually have a spirit duplicator in the basement; picked it up at a school auction when I was in 7th? grade. Of course this was in the 90's so while I knew what a "mimeograph" was, all I had experienced were photocopies by then. I managed to track down a brand new gallon of duplicating fluid (lots of doom and gloom warnings on the side), and found carbon paper makes perfect masters. I even have some new wicks for it! I rattled quite a few papers off on the old electric SMC for the fun of it and had perfect purple results! Cory

http://www.audiovisionsinc.com/usedstuff/projector16mm20825375.html

 

[mathewhebailey0]

Sometimes the 16mm projectors would eat the film. Remember the disaster the Swedish Chef had in The Muppet Movie with a 35mm Simplex XL projector? The scene where Kermit is staring at the camera & the image just melts on the screen? Next thing you see is the chef with his cap tangled in the film.

 

[jasonl]

The White Hole

I used to hate that when the film would burn and create the weird looking hole in the middle of the screen. Scared me when I first saw that happen. Super8mm melts real quick. 16mm will sit there and bubble and turn weird colors and for a while before the film melts away and you get the "white hole"

In the 80s we had a projector that could run backwards. There was a reverse play switch and you could listen for the satanic messages.

 

[jasonl]

What does Bell & Howell make now?

Electric Razors of course!

Well, they don't make nuthin anymore (like most vintage brands), they import @#$% from China and slap their brand on it.

Bell and Howell Triple Head Shaver - As Seen On TV

 

[deeptub]

We had B&H autoloads and even one Graflex projector in grade school. As time went by they were replaced by Eiki NTs with automatic threading which was quite persnickety--if I remember correctly, you had to square the end of the film with the cutter, flip two levers, turn the control to forward, the film would go fluttering through its path, often coming out of the projector somewhere other than where it was supposed to...etc. I think one lever flipped back to its operating position when the film passed, but the other lever had to be manually flipped from "thread" to "operate". Teachers HATED them. In high school and college all we had were Eiki slot-loads which completely eliminated all the drama of movie set-up.

Who remembers National Geographic filmstrips? I remember how carefully thought-out they were, so as to avoid any technical difficulties. The filmstrip cans were color-coded to the tape cases and the booklets. And the focus screen explained to advance to the next frame (a plain blue screen) and start the tape. Of course the teacher would pick two yahoos--one to run the projector and one to run the tape, and invariably they'd get those simple directions mixed up and about 5 frames in everyone would realize the narrative didn't match the image. Used to drive me NUTS.

T.

Pardon Our Interruption...

 

[jasonl]

Eiki NT?

What was the next model? XP? LOL

 

[mathewhebailey0]

Some 35mm projectors can also run backwards such as the Simplex
& german made Kinoton(e) studio projectors,not forgetting the upright & horizontal flatbed moviolas.

 

[jasonl]

I don't know what the model is but it was all black and had keyboard type buttons for controls, and it played backwards. Those replaced the funky old B&H's and Kodaks that the school had before.

 

[zzzzz]

Deeptub, do you recall if the Eiki 16mm projectors in which the film fluttered through its path were turquoise blue in color? If so, they may have been the older RT series. On the NT series (black case), the claw and shoe retracted during threading and the film (usually) passed through without any drama, assuming the end was trimmed properly. Also, like the Hell and Bowells, you pushed one lever to engage automatic threading, then tugged on the end of the film to disengage the mechanism once the film passed through. The rewind lever is the only other lever on the Eiki, and would have to be up to thread and run film. The only projectors I've worked with that have thread/operate levers are Graflex (later Singer and Telex) and the B&H 1580 and 2580 slot-loaders.

FWIW, the next (and last) Eiki 16mm series was the SNT & SSL. No Eiki Vista 16mm in the future.

 

[bostonwash]

I seem to remember those copies feeling kind of wet, cold, and slimey. I don't know about sniffing them, though.

 

[deeptub]

zzzzz, you're right--I remember now, the rewind lever. Of course, it would always be left in the rewind position, so one would have to flip it back before one could load. That must be why I remembered it as an auto threading lever. We did have one older turquoise Eiki in jr. high--EIKI SOUND the case said--I must be projecting the fluttering from it onto the black NTs (no pun intended).

T.

 

[zzzzz]

One thing about the Eiki NTs, Deeptub, is that on the early (circa 1979-81) models you had to flip the rewind lever down and then turn the motor on, just like the RTs. Around 1982 Eiki added a microswitch that turned on the motor whenever the rewind lever was flipped down, which put an end to the issue of leaving the rewind lever down because lifting the lever turned the motor off.

It also put an end to the one potentially confusing aspect of those old Eikis...to rewind, you put the motor on "forward". Go figure...

 

[Cybrvanr]

I've got some old cartoon reels and a Bell & Howell 1552 projector to run them in. It's sort of a cantankerous auto-loader, but once the film's threaded up, it runs pretty good. I remember the old Singer projectors the school had. The picture would jump and flip constantly in those things!

One of the most laughable things I remember are the films that didn't have a soundtrack, but instead had a record or tape to go with them. You'd get the 5-4-3-2-1 countdown at the beginning to get ready to press "play". Invaribly, halfway through the film, the sound would get out of sync, and it would look totally screwy with the people's lips not matching the sound. Most of these however were narrated films, where it didn't matter if the picture got a little off though.

...speaking of old school house AV gear, any of you all have the old Califone record players in your classrooms? I've got an old model 10 here. It was one like I had in school. Grey case, and a wire mesh speaker grill out front. The knobs are on top the speaker grill, and a big 6x9 speaker is in there. I though those were the best sounding turntables when I was young...they really aren't that bad, even though they won't hold a candle to a good HiFi system! Newer stereo Califone turntables were blue, and the speakers were the cover...they attached to the top to cover the turntable portion.

 

[deeptub]

We had bouncy Newcomb record players in our schools--all of them were faux woodgrain with baby poo yellow speaker grilles. I was completely fascinated by them, but in retrospect I can't figure out why.

We also had 3M/Wollensak cassette players that seemed quite overengineered for their task. And about a 50/50 mix of new DuKane 500 and ancient Viewlex army tank-style filmstrip projectors. 3M overhead projectors and one old, old Buhl opaque projector.

I also remember a Viewlex 16mm projector in the school we had 1st and 2nd grade in. It seemed fairly new at the time (1979ish) and as I recall it had dimly illuminated pushbuttons and required inserting a frame of sorts for the self-threading and then pulling it back out after it was threaded. Did any 16mm projector require this? This is a very distant and quite possibly corrupted memory, of course.

Zzzzz--our Eiki NTs must have all been the early version--I well recall turning the knob to Forward to rewind...and even as a pre-teen thinking it was quite idiotic. I remember also thinking that the unmarked pilot light seemed a little crude and out-of-place on an otherwise sleek looking machine.

T.

 

[jasonl]

School AV

In elementary school (76-80) we had HE, Califone, and Audiotronics record players. My most wonderful memories of music class was the teacher playing different types of world music for us on the dual speaker Califone. This was of course the model with the floating headshell and great sounding speakers. The Audiotronics and HE units didn't sound too great, they sounded rather tinny.

For projectors we had an army of B&H's and Kodak Pageants. But we had one more thing that propelled us into the future. The big blue JVC 1/4" U-Matic VTR! I remember watching ABC Afterschool Specials in class... Stoned and Hewitt's Just Different (which featured a FUNKY ASS soundtrack by the way). Stoned features Scott Baio on drugs.

I was never a fan of overheads but I think ours was 3m.

Filmstrips were run through Viewlex and DuKane. I remember in a reading class, the teacher had a unit made by EDI that rapidly advanced frames while we were supposed to read out loud the words. She also had an Audix projector that used a filmstrip in a cartridge kind of thing. It was automatic with the tape recording and made a kind of snapping sound when it advanced. No beep, no warning, just CLICK! and it's the next frame. I was more interested in the machine that what it was showing.

In middle school (1980-84), VCRs were coming on to the scene. We had a mix of 16mm, U-Matic and VHS. The 16mm projectors were typical B&H, Kodak, and Simplex. The record players were being retired and cassetts were taking over.

In high school (1984-88), good look finding a film or record player at all. VHS and cassettes were the norm.