The other day I stumbled across an interesting letter: a notice to town residents distributed in 1943 stating that “ration book two” would be issued at the elementary school following a specific schedule and that everyone needed to bring “ration book one” with them…
I am making the assumption that this is a duplicate and not the original, since I think typists at the time had better things to do than type 5,000 copies of the same letter.
My question: How would they have duplicated the original back in 1943?
The slightly-yellowed letter is in almost perfect condition. It appears that the original was typewritten and not typeset since in several places letters are high or low, where the shift key wasn’t fully depressed.
It looks just like a photocopy, but I don’t think photocopiers existed at that time.
My first thought was Mimeograph, but I never saw a black Mimeograph.
IIRC in the school I went to, they had another copy machine that did make black copys from a typewriten orignial. A special multi-part paper was typed on, seperated, one part put on the drum of the copy machine, the machine turned on, and copys made.
This process was more expensive than a mineograph so it was used for important papers only. The weekly tests were blue.
So the mimeograph goes back at least that far. And we need to note that a mimeograph uses a “cut stencil” where ink is forced through the stencil and onto the paper, while a hectograph, also known as a “spirit duplicator” uses a different process. Mimeograph inks were available in many colors, although black was the most common. If you were in the military, you probably heard the term “cut him some orders”, supposedly that’s because the typewriter keys actually cut through the coating on the mimeograph stencil so that the ink could flow through.
In the spirit duplicator a master is made by typing or writing in a special sheet of paper. During this process, a ink paste is tranfered onto the back or the paper in a pattern matching the information typed or written on the front. The paper to be printed upon has a solvent applied and the paper is then pressed against the master. The solvent tranfers some of the paste ink to the paper.
GaryM’s post is excellent. I just want to point out that the second process is commonly called “ditto” and unfortunately is mis-labelled as “Mimeograph” by many people. “Ditto” is usually blue-ish-purple and “Mimeo” is usually black.
Including me! When I hear “mimeograph”, I think about those purple pages with the delightful aroma being delivered in our hands by our grade school teachers.
On to the document… Following GaryM’s description, the document appears to have been generated by a proper mimeograph. According to this, the openings in the stencil simply exposed a porous fiber base. The letters on my document seem to have precisely the appearance one would expect if the ink were forced through a porous fiber sheet.
When I was a kid, my school used a sort of primitive printing process to make small amounts of copies of things such as tests.
The master is made from some sort of wax paper. You could type or draw or write on it to remove the wax. Then the master is attached to a cylinder that needed to be rotated by hand. IIRC, ink is stored inside the cylinder and seeps through little holes on the surface.
You put a stack of paper underneath the machine, and each rotation of the cylinder makes a copy of the original.
I think you’re exactly right Chronos! Most mimeograph machines were run by electric motors, but some were hand cranked.
Think of a mimeograph as a low tech printing press. What’s even better about the spirit duplicators , or hectograph, is that you can make your own. You make a geletin and pour it into a shallow pan. Then create your master and lay it on the geletin. When it’s removed the image is on the geletin and can then be transferred to the paper. That’s simplified, but there’s not too much more to it. In countirs where the press is/was controlled, methods like this were used to spread the word.
Definitely not.
This is a very simple looking typewritten sheet from the township telling everybody when and where to meet for the official business. (e.g. Last names A-C, come on Tuesday between 8:00 and 11:00)
In fact, it appears that they invited a portion of the next township over by saying something quaint like “This includes residents of XYZ township who live on the west side of the power lines…”
The person who received the sheet even scrawled some of the key points on the back in pencil for quick reference.
I remember taking a drafting class in my mispent highschool years wherein dulpicates were made using (IIRC, and spelling be with me) the “Ozaloid” process, which involved strong ammonia, some kind of bright light (ultraviolet?) and special prinitng paper (which if memory serves me correctly, couldn’t stand direct sunlight long without going all weird). Based on the ammonia-ish smell of dittos, I think the principles may have been similar. I don’t know if they still use Ozaloid printing to make duplicate drawings on vellum anymore.
Bosda, I think the OP meant reproductin the letter notifying people to bring the ration books to wherever, not the books themselves.
They did this at Colditz Castle, where the Germans kept British POWs who had already made escape attempts from other camps. Maps would be smuggled in (in one case, inside a record album), and they used this method make copies. Security and shortages being what they were, they then ate the gelatin.
I don’t remember if anyone made it out of Colditz or not. Two of the prisoners were building a glider to launch from the roof. It was almost finished when allied troops came through and liberated the place.
Man, this thread really makes me like that I’ve grown up with word processors, copiers, and printers. Things seem like they’d just be so much harder to do back then.
Good point! Years back folks were pleased if the secretary typed the letter. Now because it’s done with a word processor and it’s easy to make changes, they always want to make changes!
The process you are referring to is called generically, “Diazo”. Ozalid was a company that made machines called “Ozamatic” that used this process. It was a commonly used process for many years and was especially good for large-format needs, like blueprints or music.
I’ve heard it pronounced dee-AH-zoh or dee-AY-zoh.
The Diazo process used a chemically-coated, light-sensitive paper. It was not very sensitive, so you could handle it in room light for a few minutes before it was affected, but bright sunlight or the strong lamps in the Diazo machines would expose it in a few seconds. After exposure, it was developed in an ammonia-vapor bath for a few seconds. The ammonia smell would evaporate after a while.
The original was prepared on a transparent or translucent material (often called “vellum” or “onion-skin”). The original was placed on top of the copy material and fed into the machine. Light would pass thru the original and make a contact image on the copy material, so you see enlargements and reductions were impossible with this setup.
The color of the image and the background was up to the chemical coating on the copy material. Blueprints made a negative image with a blue background. Material was also available that produced a black image on a white background (for music), and a wide variety of paper types was available.
There was no “fixing” process, so the paper became yellowed quickly over time due to exposure to air, light and heat. But the image persevered, and I have some prints stored away from air, light and heat that have changed little over 40 years.
Warehouses used this process for invoices, architects for blueprints, music copy shops for music. It was the best thing around for music, since size was not a problem and the copy substrate could be heavy stock, so it wouldn’t curl up and fall off a music stand. The result was far superior to early xerox for these reasons. You could get 13"x38" paper (as well as rolls) and print 4 music pages at once, then fold them or tape-bind to another copy. Large scores were no problem.
The machines were large, heavy, smelly and noisy. Some were so large you could stand two operators side-by side feeding it, as it handled the material in a continuous belt from input to finished output. I can still smell the ammonia!
I believe the Diazo process has been supplanted by improved xerographic machines today in all of these applications.
We had a discussion on copy processes, including mimeograph, hectograph, and spirit duplicators, on this SDMB thread:
When I started work, word processors were not common. If there was an unimportant typo in a document, it was allowed to stand - it was too much effort to correct. Now that we have computers, standards have risen to the point where we repeatedly correct a document until it is perfect - just because we can - and guess what - it takes just as long to produce that document as it did before!
I dont know if the technology goes back to WWII, bit in my teens I used to write for a fanzine. That is how things were done before the internet. Articals had to be typed onto a special fiberous ‘paper’ that had a soft backing. The typewritter would cut through the fiberous paper and this paper was later loaded onto some sort of printing machine that, I presume, alowed ink through the cuts and onto the printed sheet. You had to get it perfect first time!