early copying methods at school?

[koshiinian]

When I was in school in the 80's we had copied sheets that were always in purple ink - before photocopiers. What was this odd blurry method of replication?

[eyebrows]

i used to just look accross to what teh brainbox had written and copy that way....

[Bathsheba]

Duplicator? It was a stencil on a barrel-shaped thingy and you turned a handle from what i remember x

[Ethel]

We've had copying machines long before the 1980s. :)

However, is it the Gestetner you are thinking of?

[BuzzNitemare]

Is this the kind of thing you're thinking of?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator


We always called it a banda copier at our school.

[koshiinian]

thanks for the answers, I never saw it being done, I only got the copies handed out to me!! it was usually handwritten stuff, always in purple!

[sddsddean]

Good old Gestetner machines. In our junior school it was a perk to be allowed to stand there fo hours winding the handle round! Had a search for photos and this is the best I could come up with.
http://www.birminghamstories.co.uk/db/media/co ll/1981_S_03518.jpg

[taichiperson]

Wow - I remember those, though I think they used them at my son's playschool too - he's 20 now.

[gen2]

BuzzNitemare is correct. The trade name was Ditto in the US and Banda in the UK. They were widely used in schools in the 60s but it was very optimistic if you hoped to get more than 100 copies from a single master (not 500 as the Wikipedia article suggests). Large volumes were Roneo'd. I remember when I was a pupil during the 60s, our homework tasks in science were issued from a Banda spirit duplicator and it was often a struggle to work out what we had to do - both from the paleness of the copy and the handwriting of the teacher. We were still using the machines in the 70s but less and less. The main advantage over the Gestetner/Roneo method of duplication was the ability to greate multi-coloured diagrams by changing the backing sheet during creation. Particularly useful in biology for distinguishing between arterial blood (red) and venous blood (blue).

I do not recal the machine being used in the 80s - it simply took up space in a cupboard. By that time large volume reproduction was being done on Litho machines and small volumes by Xerography (photocopiers).

By the mid 80s, colour could be introduced through computer technology - firstly through dot -matrix printers (using two or more coloured ribons) such as the Apple Stylewriter and then through ink-jets (bubble-jets).

Laser printing technology gradually became affordable during the 90s (B&W) and eventually in the 2000s colour lasers entered the budget market.

[karenmac60]

God, I still remember the smell of those things. My dad was a teacher and used to bring stuff home with him and it had the most amazing smell - takes me right back....

[anotherlittlethi]

The Ditto Machine, more info at: http://www.retroland.com/dittos/