Old Copy Machine With Purple Ink

The mimeograph process should not be confused with the spirit duplicator process.

Old copy machine with purple ink.

The stencil was thin rubber backed with paper and it was critical to get this on right while peeling the paper backing. When i was in grade school i remember this copier that printed in purple ink and the secretary had to turn a handle to produce copies. Stencil duplication was a low cost printing method that worked by forcing ink through waxed paper stencils on to target paper. The duplicator that produces purple copies is not a mimeograph.

The ink came in tubes. The stencil duplicator or mimeograph machine often abbreviated to mimeo is a low cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. Ditto machines made the purple copies that faded over time faster with exposure to light. It didn t use a drum.

Who could forget the purple ink that rubbed off on your hands the copies had a smell that was recognised by any 1960 70 s school kid. Ideally each ink color would have its own screen. When the gelatin got too saturated with ink dad would liquidize it by heating it and re pour it into the pan les newcomer reports that the heyer hectograph co. The master for the ditto was only good for a limited number of copies as the solvent spirit dissolved.

We just cleaned it out to change color. Mimeographs along with spirit duplicators and hectographs were a common technology in printing small quantities as in office work classroom. I never knew to actual name of it. There were two cylinders with a silkscreen belt running on them.

Duplicating machines were the predecessors of modern document reproduction technology. Both pieces of paper are stained with purple ink because they went through a machine invented in 1923 called a ditto machine or spirit duplicator. The tray was only 1 4 deep. I guess we changed those.

Ditto machine purple print and that smell.