Back in the mid-'80s I worked at a place that had a hand-cranked machine to punch rectangular holes into stacks of paper for comb binding. It looked similar to this. The plaque on it said it was made by The 1960s Corporation. (It could have been The 1960s Company, but Corporation ‘feels right’.)
Aside from that one machine, I’ve never heard of the company. Where did they come from, and where did they go? What else did they make?
EDIT: On looking at the machine in the photo, I don’t see where it punches the holes. The machine in the Data Library did punch holes, and it also had the fingers and the little slidey things that stretched the comb so the person could put the paper on.
I used a machine for comb binding in the late 80’s that was a system by a company called GBC, but other than that I got nothin’. Are you sure that was the actual company name and not just some motto? Kind of hard to understand why a company would date itself like that…
The machine in the OP looks identical to a GBC binder, as referred to by CookingWithGas. We used a hand-cranked one just like this in my engineering office until 2005, when we got an electric one that drilled the holes when you pressed a button. It’s still used today.
For both of them, you had to use the lever on the right to manually open up the combs to thread them into the holes. Nothing automatic at all.
We have an older version of the pictured machine in my office. It does indeed say “Nineteen Sixties Corporation” on it. The nameplate has a logo that says “NSC” to the left of the phrase “Nineteen Sixties Corporation”. Yes, “Nineteen Sixties Corporation” is written out.
It’s hard to see in the picture, but there’s probably a slot to slide the papers into for punch binding.
I have no idea what happened to the “Nineteen Sixties Corporation”. The name must have seemed cool for at least 20 minutes back in that decade …
Given that they’re “celebrating 50 years!” (according to the linked page) I’m guessing the name seemed really forward-thinking when they came up with it.
Over Easter break this year I worked for four days at the print shop my brother was managing, and I got to use exactly that. They didn’t get much call percentage-wise for comb binding, so they hadn’t bought an automatic machine. That’s a fairly frustrating binding to make by hand. This wasn’t a mom-n-pop shop, either; at that time of year they were running shifts of 15 people and doing most of the reader business for the professors of a fairly major university.
Reminds me of the Raymond Scott orchestra, who recorded a tune called Copyright 1950. In 1940. Ray was quite the futurist, but to anyone listening in 1950 it would have sounded like, well, 1940. Still does.
I remember binding my brother’s degree thesis with one of those hand cranked machines which we had in the office for brochures. Typically, he had left it until the last possible day to write it, have it typed (by my mother), photocopy it at the public library (which broke down), appear in my office to finish photocopying it, bind it, and catch the last possible train that would get him to the other side of the country in time to hand it in on the last possible day. I almost punched a section upside down.
He got a Third.
On the other hand, his (half-completed, somewhere in the late 50s/early 60s, I think) completely electronic rendition of “Night and Day” still sounds like it was recorded in the late 80s by a minimalist electro group. Sound here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq0jtzbOCFQ
