Are you old enough to remember ditto machines?
When I was in grammar school, we didn’t have Xerox copiers. We had ditto machines. Everyone who experienced the fresh ditto paper can recall the purple ink, and that unique smell wafting from the freshly-made copies.
I had an extra-special duty in fifth grade. Since I was one of the best students in the grade, I was appointed Ditto Maker. If a teacher needed copies of a test or homework assignment made, I was pulled out of class and sent to the office, where I would chat with the secretary and the vice-principal while I ran off copies of the requested ditto.
These memories are among the strongest of my childhood memories (possibly due to the importance of the scent of ditto ink; scent memories are the strongest). But I do remember feeling very proud every time a teacher came by and asked me to go to the office and make dittos. It was quite an honor and responsibility.
Progress is good. Xerox machines, laser printers, and modern technology make life a lot easier. But nothing will ever replace the scent of a freshly-made ditto paper, slightly damp, that I made myself while getting out of class for a few minutes.
I remember being sent to the school secretary to pick up the freshly dittoed test papers.
The scent was almost as good as warm chocolate chip cookies.
The ditto fumes were probably carcinogenic, and the experience may have unconsciously led to your smoking for all those years.
I believe the actual word was “Mimeograph”, was is not?
Yes, I remember the ditto machines (aka mimeographs). The purple ink, the smell, the dampness… I even remember how they worked: you had to type onto these special packets, some kind of cloth-like paper backed with a purple-inked sheet like carbon paper. To make the copies, you detached the typed sheet, turned it over so it was purple-ink side up, and clamped it onto the machine – onto the drum . Then you would spin the drum by cranking the handle. The drum would press against the fresh white paper and pull them up, transferring the ink – I guess with some kind of toner that was stored inside the drum (it was the toner that made it damp and gave off the smell). I remember the fwipp-fwipp noise it made, too…
I also remember a very early form of photographic-transfer machine – with a hot, bright light – very slow, very expensive. Teachers would use it very rarely, for very special needs, like copying a page out of a big, old book. I don’t remember if it created a single paper copy… actually, I have a memory of pink tissue paper along with it – so maybe it created another kind of film impression, that could be run off in in a different way? Does anyone recall?
Anybody else here remember slide rules?
Oh, yes, I remember ditto machines and paper and the special smell. Paper that was printed by ditto machine also had a special texture.
Slide Rules…I think I still have one in a box somewhere
Man, I love Van Halen. Totally irrelevant, but so true.
The Ditto fluid was methyl hydrate – highly poisonous. I used to wash the purple dye off my hands with it, which wasn’t that great an idea from the point of view of health. However, it was effective. I think that it was some time in the 1970s when our school board ordered all machines and fluid removed from schools. Methyl alcohol can cause blindness and/or death if you drink it, as some unfortunate sailors in the, then, Royal Canadian Navy discovered while serving aboard H.M.C.S. Magnificent, an aircraft carrier.
Well, Meryl, as long as we’re trumpeting our school successes, I don’t like to brag but even in third grade at McCulloch School in Detroit I was the lead (of two) on the science squad in Miss Meisel’s science room with direct responsibility for the two guine pigs, Timmy and Princess Grace.