Ditto / Mimeograph Machines

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michaelman2

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Hey anyone else used to love the smell of a fresh ditto copy. I am helping plan a class reuinion and we are thinking about printing the program (or at least an insert) on a ditto/spirit duplicator. I miss the kuh chunk kuh chunk of those machines
 
Oh, yeah!

The great smell was the only thing that could help take the curse off a Pop Quiz.

Thirty kids all sniffing the paper at the same time. No wonder we turned out like we did!

veg
 
Ohhh... I caught the end of that era in the late 80s. I remember taking a "business machines" class in high school the involved typewriting on a stencil and then reproducing it on a Mimeograph machine. I distinctly remember it going ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk and then the bell going ding! ding! ding! ding! ding! ding! at the end of the cycle. Of course, whenever I watched a teacher doing that I always thought the machine was saying "Homework homework homework homework..."

The "ditto" machines used a "Fluid master" that you typed on. It wasn't as fast and dramatic as the mimeograph machine but it had it's own sounds and smells. It was a kind of ka-chunk but slower.

At school we also had a HUGE Xerox copier that at the time was fast. It would go like "Weeeeeeeeeeee!" (the heads spinning up and then "hissssss-clunk hissssss-clunk hisssss-clunk" Like a laser printer.

I want to see one of those original fax machines where the paper rotated on a drum and you had to couple the phone to the machine. I've seen it on Secret Life Of Machines. Those shows are such a ride through time. And yes, I watched every minute of the washing machine episode religiously.
 
I remember those ditto machine copies vividly! That purple ink, and the smell of the freshly printed paperwork! A walk by the printing shop at the school always was great because of the smell too! I was too young to really use one of these machines. They fell out of use in the mid 80's as the photocopiers got popular, and by the time I was old enough to use one, they were all gone.

That was also right about the time that 16mm movies fell out of use, and were replaced with TV's and VCR's as I entered middle school. Nothing beats the clatter of an old Bell & Howell projector in a dim classroom while watching those flickery pictures! Fridays were movie day, and we would gather several classes together to watch films.
 
YOu gotta be over 30 and OT: Weird 16mm films

If the words Bell & Howell bring back memories of watching some underbudget educational film. They were the big brothers to the B&H Autoload Super 8mm projectors.

In Social Studies class we saw a film called The Ugly Little Boy. It was a SciFi (and a CHEESEBALL one at that) about some futuristic scientists "teleporting" a young boy from what would be like from caveman times. I would be interested to see that again now 25 years later.

One of the weirdest and the scariest I've ever seen come out of a Bell & Howell 16mm projector was a movie that was shown in church (and please let's not turn this into a Christian-bashing thread). The movie was The Burning Hell. I'm sure I would've laughed if I saw it again but I wasn't laughing when I was 9 years old. ACK. I had nightmares for weeks.

I don't remember a whole lot of other Cheese-U-Cational films except that some were cool, some were boring, it just meant "Woohoo! No work today!"
 
When we graduated 8th grade we did a multi page ditto of all the things our class had done through the years. Most of the class started that school in 1st grade and went right on through to high school. It was a hoot rereading our "accomplishments" at our later high school reunions.

Oh, and my vote for favorite 16mm films. The one they showed in high school chemistry. Billy and Suzy are in the back seat of Mommy's 1957 Lincoln convertible, with 10 other kids going down Highway 1 in California. They're drinking Coke and asprin to get high. This, of course, leads to marijuana use. Susy becomes a prostitute to support her habit and Billy steals hubcaps (the small ones, not the deluxe large ones) from 1959 Fords to support his drug habit. Our teacher, half serious, threatened to flunk anybody that laughed during this film. I'd love to find a copy of it!
 
There's a Beavis and Butthead episode called Driver's Ed. They make fun of those cheesy 16mm movies. God, I'd wish somebody would release those on DVD, but add the projector noise and laughing kids in the background.
 
Ironrite, do you suppose the title music for that flick could have been Highway to Hell? "Signal 30" was shown to us in Drivers' Ed. Carnage for real.

The old style fax with the paper clipped to the drum in the early 70s was what we used at the department store. If a customer bought a grill and wanted to pick it up at the warehouse, it would be written up on a BIG TICKET like furniture or a major appliance and then one of us would have to go up to the executive suite and clip it in place, turn the machine on, call the warehouse fax machine, get the tone, put the receiver in the headphone-like cups and then the drum would start. There was like a needle marker or line that slowly moved from one side of the whirling page to the other and then it would be done and you undid everything.

I loved the Bell Telephone Science Films with the authoratative yet kind Frank Baxter narrating and talking to the various animated characters. We watched them from the big B&H projectors around which all of the female teachers were just so out of their element. Either the principal or one of the seventh grade boys had to set them up and there was always some glich in those non-self-threading machines. Do you remember the swing out speaker?
My junior college had a huge coin operated XEROX machine in the library. The thing was huge, like 4 feet X 4 feet.

The smell of the Ditto ink on the handouts was devine and all of us kids were pickling our livers and brains on the fumes. Some time in the 60s, they came up with a way to burn a mimeo master with something like a photo-copier and lazy teachers no longer has to type the masters for tests. They could just copy them from the questions in the teachers' edition of the text. For a while in college, I was one of the student assistants who had to operate the ditto and mimeo machines. I remember that horrible thick black ink that went into the drum and the DISASTER if the cap was not tightened before it was started. The only bigger mess was if the lid was not tightly replaced on a can before it was put on the paint shaker. I notice that those are in closed plastic cases now.
 
Cybrvanr..thanks for the site!!!
Man as a kid I always wanted things that were, well not the norm..One year it was of course the Suzy Homemaker Stove, dishwasher, the whole shebang..then one year it was a Cord Switchboard, that really threw my dad for a loop..they did not sell telephone equip then, so he had to really dig for this thing (still have it)...then the Ditto machine..I killed more trees with that thing and the smell, was addicting..hummmmm maybe that is the problem
 
Learn Not To Burn

I remember seeing that as a kid! Also, Tom mentioned Signal 30, it's on the DVD Those Naughty Drivers. So there really were "shock" films that showed mangled bodies in car accidents.

Like Butthead would say "WHoa! huhu huhu huhu that was cool"
 
Gestetner

Hi Guys,

Tom Turbo was talking about Mimeo Masters, the machine was made by Gestetner. We had those at school up until the late 90's when the last ones were finally retired.

I dont know how the technology worked, but you'd put the original through the machine like a photocopier, it'd make a duplicate onto another piece of paper which would then make the copies.

It seemed to be an Ink/Toner hybrid, with the master made of toner and the copies all Ink.

They were noisey and complicated, their only advantage was a very very low page cost. But when they were knew, they would've been very exciting compared to the manual way
 
A difference?

What's the difference between a ditto and a mimeograph? I know the ditto machines used a purple ink-laden template to transfer the ink onto fresh sheets of paper via methyl alcohol (ergo, the great smell, and fresh coolness of the copies)...and, the sixtieth copy was way lighter than the first...but wasn't a mimeograph different?
 
Mimeograph vs. ditto

Mimeograph used a stencil to make the master. You typed on (sans ribbon on the typewriter) and the typewriter head would cut the letters onto a green wax sheet behind a cardboard backing. When you were finished typing, you brought it to the machine. As far as I remember, you take the backing off of the stencil and CAREFULLY load the stencil onto the drum. You held the stencil in both hands. One the top part was on the hooks, you slowly crank the drum until the stencil stuck to it. I think you were supposed to give it a few turns without any paper just to prime the ink. The next part is the fun part. Load your paper, set # of copies, flip the lever and enjoy the show.

The "Ditto" used kinda the same principle but with a purple kind of ink. You typed on a "Fluid master" that I think was two pieces of paper, one coated with alcohol to attract ink (or something like that). Same process, load it on the drum, give it a few turns, load blank paper, watch the show.

KA-CHUNK KA-CHUNK KA-CHUNK KA-CHUNK KA-CHUNK

As far as which one I like better? Mimeograph. It's faster and more dramatic. It looks like it will take a finger off if you get too close.
 
You are correct about the process of the ditto machine Jason. I know I am dating myself here but when I first started teaching in 1970 all we had were the ditto machines and they were hand cranked. Then about 4 years later along came the electric machlne and we all thought we were in heaven. I have spent many of hours running those machines. You are all so right, nothing like that smell from fresh ran copies on the ditto machine. Terry
 
Mimeographs-16mm projectors-yes remember those-Remember printing items on the mieograph-the teacher would let the class run the machine--can you imagine that now??She would probably get into big trouble on that-kids using and operating moving machinery!!also the projectors-have a Bell and Howell classroom projector in my collection.also a beat up Kodak "Pagent"The Kodak needs some work.Remember'em both-I was the "AV GeeK" at the time-threaded and ran them-acted as the class "projectionist"any of you get that when it came to "movie day" at your school?In many of my classes-the teacher gave everyone a turn at it.Was fun.In shop class-had the job of hanging the pull down screens in the classrooms of the new High school I attended.Never seen so many screens in one place before!They were sent to the shop class for the shop students to tend too-I suppose in shop classes they had lots of "handymen" for those jobs.Made it fun and a good excuse to get out of many classes!!
 
Kodak Pageant and B&H

Kodak Pageants were manually threaded I remember. I always liked the B&H better because of it's "automatic" loading. We had the Supe8 little brother to those machines. The difference was on the 16mm version, you could thread the machine automatically but you still had to roll it onto the takeup reel.

On the Super8mm version, it was done automatically but you had to hold down the tension button so wouldn't flutter.

The Kodak super 8s at the time were better in that you insert the film into the hole and it did the rest.

The best movie projector I've had was a Kodak moviedeck. It was as automatic as it got. It's one of those weird ones where the film sat horizontally on top (like a record player), the film snaked through the machine, and wound up on the takeup underneath. Had an uncle that died and left us his stuff. He had a Moviedeck in his closet with a red reel of film. I tried it and it worked. The film was a porno (go figure). So to make sure the machine worked I viewed the entire film >:-). The film wasn't a blockbuster (maybe another kind of 'buster'). Started out with 2 kids smoking pot and then it got bad from there. So I brought it home (the machine, not the movie) and got a chance to investigate it more. I found out you can fix the film to loop around the reel such that it holds on, and when it comes to the end, the projector will sense that and start the rewind process... TRULY AUTOMATIC! Unfortunately, Katrina took both the B&H, the Kodak Moviedeck and all our home movies. At least we have memories.

I found out the movie "The Ugly Little Boy" was an Isaac Asimov story, only dumbed down and cheesed up for 16mm classroom viewing.
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-EIKI-NT...ryZ15254QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 

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