#129 Print & Copy

2 thoughts to “#129 Print & Copy”

1. Hi Chaz,

   What an awe­some mem­o­ry & cool, pop­ping design!
   Yes, I remem­ber the car­bon paper. Also, the pur­ple mimeo­graphs in grade school that smelled real­ly great to me! I do miss the unique, slow­er, old- fash­ioned ways of print­ing press­es, type­writ­ers and car­bon paper.…life nowa­days seems like a super-​quick, advanced-​tech (but ulti­mate­ly bland & unsat­is­fy­ing) freeze-​dried astro­naut meal. 

   (Sor­ry I have been MIA in emails…lots and lots of ill­ness plus fin­ish­ing up April’s tran­scripts and her grad­u­a­tion events.)

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   1. “Smelled great” — real­ly? Don’t you mean “liked get­ting high” off the fumes? Those were actu­al­ly spir­it dupli­ca­tors (usu­al­ly called Dit­to machines, which was the Coke or Kleenex of the indus­try brand names). The print was pur­ple, but it also came in sev­er­al oth­er col­ors. I used to cre­ate art­work by apply­ing sev­er­al col­ors to one mas­ter. (The “ink” was actu­al­ly like a cray­on which trans­ferred to the slick paper via the “spir­it” of the alcohol-​like solvent.)

      Then there were the actu­al mimeo­graphs which used sten­cils through which an intense­ly black & smelly ink pushed through onto the highly-​absorbent, toothy paper. You could see the oily out­lines of the ink on the sheet. Prob­lem was, you could­n’t get high off of that ink.

      I’m writ­ing this after the first civil­ian launch­es into space by Bran­son, Bezos & Musk. So we might be din­ing on freeze-​dried astro­naut food — in space, actu­al­ly — soon­er than you think.

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