Rearranging his office recently, my boss came across a bottle of Bohn Correction Fluid, made by Bohn Business Machines, INC., and nobody here seems to know how it’s used. It isn’t white out, which is thick and white. This stuff is thin and red and a little murky. It seems more like ink than anything else, but it has a very acrid smell of iodine or an unusually pungent rubbing alcohol.
What is this stuff, and what exactly does it correct?
This site mentions Bohn as a maker of a “spirit duplicator,” similar to a mimeogrpah machine.
Maybe it’s some sort of solvent intended to correct a typing error by dissolving the ink rather than covering it up? If so, it may have been continually used (as opposed to used and discarded) until it lost its effectiveness, thus meaning the container you found had ink in it? Or perhaps I’m off base. Several common solvents are QUITE effective at dissolving ink (which is why chemists often use pencil to mark such containers). Chlorinated hydrocarbons are quite good at it, but all of them appear to be carcinogens, from carbon tetrachloride (a potent carcinogen) to dichlormethane (a rather weak carcinogen, but one just the same). Carbon tet was used until a few decades ago as a dry cleaning slovent, and dichlor (or methylene chloride as it is also known) is still in use today as a common solvent in synthesis labs and as a solvert for disolving gas chromatography samples. Methylene chloride and chloroform (chloromethane) are two chlorinated solvents I’ve worked with, and both have VERY high vapor pressures, so I’d be surprised if either of these would survive years in such a container. I’ve never really handled carbon tet, though would guess it’s V.P. is lower, and may survive long term storage. Plus, it would have been fairly common based on the vintage for it to be carbon tet (which was in heavy use before the negative effects were discovered).
So, to make a long story short, my WAG is that the solution is carbon tetrachloride (IUPAC name: tetrachloromethane). This is a total WAG however, though not an uninformed one.
First, my qualifications: in high school my nickname was Mimeo Mike. I was the guy in charge of the mimeograph and spirit duplicating (let’s just call it SD to save me the typing) machines. I spent more time with those damn machines than with any girl.
Regarding the INK correction fluid theory: the only such liquids I’ve ever known are bleaches (essentially colorless fluids that smell like Clorox), not solvents. And for good reason, I would venture: a solvent would probably turn your letter into a paper chromatogram. (Hey, it was a math-science high school.) Basically, all the dyes in the ink would run and separate out, but they wouldn’t go away. Let’s proceed…
Despite the comment in the post above, SD and mimeograph machines are NOT the same. The link in the post seems to give a pretty good description of the two devices; briefly, SD is sort of what your tire does when you drive over a wet painted line and keep going, and the mimeograph process is a stencil arrangement. Because of the differences between them, correcting a mistyped SD “master” and a mimeograph “stencil” require entirely different methods.
SPIRIT DUPLICATION: To my knowledge, there was no such thing as SD “correction fluid.” (Not to be confused with plain old SD “fluid,” – essentially denatured alcohol, hence the name “spirit” duplication. I’m not kidding, incidentally.)
To make corrections they did sell these utterly USELESS white, grease-pencil-type thingees which, when rubbed over the offending typo, were supposed to seal in the waxy dye that transferred the image to the paper. Using my tire analogy, it was as if you put duct tape over the wet spot; it would still be there, but covered over. In reality, the pencils just made a smeary mess of the dye… which printed like a smeary mess on the paper.
MIMEOGRAPH: Now mimeo’s a different story… and yes, there was mimeograph correction fluid! (Let’s call it MCF.)
A mimeo stencil is essentially a sheet of strong, porous paper coated with a thin layer of soft wax. The coating makes it impervious to ink, but if you write or type on the stencil, the wax is “pushed aside” at the point of contact, exposing the pores in the paper; the stencil is mounted on an ink-covered drum; ink bleeds through the open pores onto a blank sheet of paper, and voila: your grandmother’s xerox copy!
MCF is basically wax dissolved in a fast-drying solvent; paint it over the typo on the stencil and it seals up the pores… no ink bleeds through. It was great stuff. You could even retype over the corrected area if you didn’t glop on too much MCF.
My MCF came in a bottle about the size of a white-out bottle, complete with a little brush in the cap. I used blue MCF, but there’s no reason it couldn’t come in other colors.
Providing your mystery liquid hasn’t “gone bad” during one of the past six presidential administrations, here’s how to test if it is, in fact, MCF: paint some on a non-porous surface like Formica or metal, wait until it dries (a minute should do), and try to scratch it off w/ your fingernail. MCF will scratch off very easily, leaving no stain behind.
One last bit of mimeograph trivia (…it is truly a dying art, so allow me to pass my knowledge on to the young ones…): mimeo stencils came boxed in quantities of “quires.”
One quire = 1/20 of a ream (500 sheets) = 25 stencils.
Except for mimeograph stencils, I have never, EVER known of anything that comes in quires.
Thanks, stuyguy. That appears to be exactly what this stuff was. From looking at it in the bottle I had no idea it would create a waxy deposit. How about that?
And thank you for allowing me to dust off and impart that otherwise useless knowledge.
So as not to end this thread entirely, I’d love to know if any other poster has ever known of anything else that comes in quires beside mimeo stencils. (No cracks about little Mormon boys here, okay?)