The smell of Mimeographs and Dittos - Life in America
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- čas přidán 17. 04. 2021
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#recollectionroad #nostalgia - Zábava
My elementary school days ( 1970s ) you definitely had to sniff the paper before doing your assignment. 📝
I'm a 70's kid too and sometimes the whole classroom would have that weird smell.
Same here.
@Clinton Nebraska -- Absolutely!! Sniffing the freshly printed out tests was a MUST! Smelled so good!
👍
But you often had to wait on your sheet to completely dry before you could write on it!
I remember that smell from elementary school. When the teacher handed out a test, the whole room smelled of it. Like the smell of play-doh, you never forget.
Exactly
Yup I remember it as well🙂
Yes...me too...I remember it well! I loved it!
Good times. Miss those days.
I have forgotten the smell but not the operation.
Born in '65. Whatever they were, I remember them bluish and damp with a great smell.
Me too, 1965.
Young whippersnappers 🤣🤣🤣
Me too!
👍
Born in 1965 myself and that's exactly how I remember them and I loved that smell!
I remember that smell as if it were yesterday and that was at least 50 years ago. Thanks for the wonderful memories.
At least! LOL!
THAT and the pine cleaner the custodial staff used.
@@PungiFungi REAL Pine-Sol (Or, for something different: "Murphy's Oil Soap") Smells like "clean"!
@@PungiFungi And the rosin smell of sweeping compound from a cardboard drum.
Red or green, it smelled the same.
I can remember hearing the ditto machine running and everyone smelling their paperwork
no wonder my teachers always seemed happy after printing us out assignments, they were buzzing from leaning over that machine.... " we needed 20 copies, she printed out 300" lol
😂😂😂
OMG, this comment! 😂 😂 😂
👍😜👍
Typical Labral wasting the tax payer's money
@@scottr3484 ?🤔?
Starting as a kindergartner in 1970 I loved the smell of dittos. The feel of wet paper, the purple color and that glorious smell. Those were good days.
I remember elementary school in the 70s it always smelled like mimeograph ink and cigarette smoke
I remember walking past the teacher's lounge- the door would open and a great cloud of smoke would billow into the hallway.
@@falcon664 it was always like that scene from the movie up in smoke with Cheech and Chong 🤣🤣
Yep...😁😁
😂😂😂😂😂😂
The teachers lounge during lunch, looked like a smog filled city in china
This is literally the story of my elementary school days in the mid-to-late 1970s. I always used to hold my worksheets up to my nose, to smell the fresh smell of the duplicating fluid after the teacher or assistant teacher ran off the sheets and handed them to us. The sheets would still be slightly damp. By my high school days, the toner-based copy machines were being used. By my college days, the first laser printers were in use.
You're right! Now that I think about it, freshly printed sheets were damp! That was fifty years ago, and we still remember.
Its a funny thing , I can remember wanting to smell it and liking the smell but I can't remember the actual smell.
@@susanbender2953 I cant remember the smell either but in the early to mid 70's it was fun when the teacher asked you to crank out 30 copy's....it was more fun when you were chosen to go outside to clap the erasers!! A lot of us would clap them on the side of the school and their would be white rectangles all over the place !!
@Michael Sheldon Reed - You must be a "youngster"! They still had the Mimeograph machines when I was in high school! (Graduated in 1972) Guess I'm an oldster. It smelled soo good! Have a great week!
@@williamd2738 Yeah! Pretty smart of the teachers to make the kids clean the erasers. They would inhale all that chalk and not know the damage they were doing to their lungs.
Those machines saved my life! I went to rough high school and wanted out. They finally let me work two hours a day in main offices last two years of school as they knew I wasn't a bad kid. Kept me from dropping out and I went on to college.
Good for you! Luckily many kids are able to escape the tyranny of the 'rough' kids ruining the schools and propel themselves out of the trench they will alway live in.
That’s freakin cool
When I was in 5th grade, my teacher would send me out frequently to make dittos. Looking back on it now, I think it’s because I talked too much and disrupted class. 😂 Tue following year in 6th grade, we were using Xerox machines, and only the teachers and office staff were allowed to touch them. 😢
My third grade teacher's classroom was close to the office, so my classmates and I would receive the copies nice and wet. When we were in fifth and sixth grade, we would want everyone to hurry up and get back to class after recess so that the paper would not become too dry. Ditto machines were still being used when I started teaching back in 1992, and the ink stains were a badge of honor.
In my mind's nose I can still smell the ink.
Same, I just did that. Cool comment.
I remember these machines. They used them when I was in elementary school. They used them in the school office.
Lol. As soon as I read "The Smell", I could instantly smell that. I hadn't even thought about that since the last time I smelled it, but it came right back! Probably 45 years ago.
my teachers used this in the 80s in my low-budget school :) The aroma of coffee wafting from the teacher's lounge, and the peppermint Elmer's paste glue....wonderful happy memories
Elementary school for me in the 1970's was the ditto machines, the American flag in every classroom and the front office switchboard was an actual switch board with the cords and plugs. If someone called the school and needed to speak to a teacher or principal, the secretary would plug it into that phone extension. When the call was completed, she would unplug it. The teacher's lounge was a smoke filled room and we never got to see what the teachers had for lunch. Oh and we also had a Registered nurse at the school in case you got hurt or sick.
This is Ralph Balfoort responding on my wife's Chromebook. I used both machines. I used the alcohol-based Ditto machine in the Army for a stage production we did in SEA; it had the advantage that I could run the pages through multiple times, each one using a different color. Later on, I became the editor of the newsletter for an historical association; the mimeograph was faster, and I could use photographs on stencils cut by a specialty outfit, but it was single color - black.
Let it be hereby known the Internet appreciates Ralph's clarification that this comment is in fact from him, not his wife, despite him making the comment while logged in on Darlene's Chromebook.
I remember the teachers being in that small maintenance room hand cranking those worksheets out.
Your teachers were being crafty. A small, small room to maximize the smell concentration!
The other reason they were in that room was to smoke a cigarette...most teachers smoked in those days
I don't see any black teachers.
👍
During my senior year of high school I was a teacher's aide and I had to go down to the office and use the ditto machine at least every other week. That fragrance is emblazoned across my olfactory system.
Besides the unforgettable smell the sheets had, the copies were also really cold if they were back brought back into the classroom quick enough. We rubbed them on out face to feel the refreshment in the warm days.
This was one of the many funny scenes from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Great memories!
Ahh, Mimeograph Memories! The color, the smell. I remember using one at church well into the 80s even. I remember far fewer problems than with present day copy machines too.
My first office job in the late 70's had a mimeograph machine. I loved using it. As a kid in school I still remember the excitement of freshly mimeographed papers and I'll never forget the smell.
Ditto 👍
@@larryx1707 , good one!!!
@@claudiahansen4938 ....😂 I couldn't resist lol....have a great day☺
The copies the made smelled so good!
Remember the smell very well. Even though it has been close to 50 years
Cold off the press! They had a cold damp feel when they were recently printed and that wonderful aroma! Good times! Thanks for the memories Recollection Road!
When my father came to Canada in 1956, he got a job at Gestetner in their repair department. His job was to repair/refurbish their ditto machines.
Gestetner was a different process than Ditto. It involved cutting stencils and actual black ink.
My elementary school had a hand crank mimeograph in the 90s for the one teacher who still insisted on using it.
@jblyon2 she must’ve had some career-ending dirt on a boss ;)
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The sheets used in mimeograph or ditto machines were also known as "Spirit Masters". Typing on one involved the use of "dummy tape", that you used on the ink side of the master, to correct typing errors. I remember school assignment and test papers, as well as the elementary school newspaper, being printed on these. Another movie reference to mimeograph machines was in "Animal House", where a member of the Omegas puts a spirit master, with all the wrong test answers, in the trash, and Bluto (John Belushi) finds it. The Deltas take the test, they all fail, and get put on "Double Secret Probation" by Dean Wormer.
When I was a kid, Dittos were for everyday classroom work and tests. Gestetner mimeographs were for very important documents: letters from the Office, and final exams.
Purple was the most common colour, with green or burgundy for special occasions. A clever/overachieving person could use all 3 on a single sheet. The inks were anilyne dyes, which are still used today by tattoo artists (to transfer artwork onto clients) and in Voter Ink (to stain people's thumbs purple, to prevent them from casting multiple ballots).
The forerunner of the Ditto machine was the Hektograph, which used a gelatine-filled tray as the transfer medium for the anilyne ink stencil.
What was the difference between Ditto and Gestettner ??
I started Kindergarten in 68, but I don't remember till 4th grade. We moved to Franklin, NC and it was a very poor area. The school was small and they used a hand-cranked model. The high school had a motor driven model.
Yes, the smell sticks in my mind. And it was fun to get to make copies.
Like everyone else I loved the smell of the fresh copies....they were even damp from the ink. Those were some great times.
Some of our classrooms had one of these machines at the back of the room. Loved the smell. Take me back. I was in grade school in the late 50's thru the 60's.
I have _very_ fond memories of those memiographed handouts, all through grade school. And that was in the 80’s. I vividly remember that smell and the smudgy purple ink... what I wouldn’t give to relive that school experience for just one day.
Ditto, not Mimeo had the smell and the purple ink.
The smell was terrible and wonderful at the same time. I would give anything to smell it one more time.
Indeed
I thought it was like regurgitated sugar cookies, but it smelled better than the classroom and some of the classmates you sat next too.....
@Lib Slayer --- YES!! Oh I'd love to smell it again. IN all honesty, I'd love to go back to the 1960s as in NOW. Have a great week!
@@TheMistysFavs completely agree !!
I was able to smell it again a few years back. My brother bought a print shop and a couple of these were in the back with all the supplies and we played with them to get them working again just for the fun of it. The smell hits you like a hammer from the past with images of grade school running through your head.
I do remember the ditto machines from elementary and middle school. By high school all the teachers used photo copies, except if the copier broke down, then it was back to good old dittos. It’s funny in college, dittos were a thing of the past, except my junior year I had one math professor who refused to use anything but dittos It was like a blast from the past.
Elementary school mid 70s to early 80s...
Loved that smell 💜
Elementary school 1973-80. Remember that smell very well. It would permeate the classroom.
So appreciated... thank you! Yes, I remember!
I remember so much from those days!
Wow, forget all about that smell... Thank you!
Ah, the smell of my childhood, along with the scent of school paste.🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
When I was in kindergarten (1951), the modeling clay had a weird smell to it that I can't describe and can't forget, either.
And the Tempera paints in the squeeze bottles in art class. The big bottles were all the same color but they they all had dry paint that had dripped down the sides and that's how you knew the paint color inside!
👍
I remember those smells. I miss them
I could almost smell this video. The memory of that scent runs deep in my memory.
I'll never forget that wonderful smell! But it also brought the dread of an up coming test, that I usually didn't study for.
In ninth grade--1958-59-- I took a class in Office Practices. Used the machine a lot.
How fondly I remember the scent of just-printed school work papers from the "ditto machine".
I'm sure there's no latent side effects all these years later. 🥴
Oh yes, all through elementary, middle, and most of high school, the sting of test day was eased by that intoxicating ditto machine copy smell on our papers. Great memories!
My class smelled them from the mid 70s to 80s. We loved that glorious smell!
There was a home version called the gelatin duplicator. It was a metal tray filled with a special gelatinous substance. You used the same masters and simply wiped over the surface then applied your completed master. One sheet at a time printing could be painfully slow, but I got to make all the copies Mom needed for PTA or Girl Scouts. Yeah that smell was just as heavenly.
Yup, my schools used "Mimeo" machines, throughout the 80s. I can still remember the purple print!
In the mid 70’s in Austin, TX I went to Summit elementary school, we had a hand cranked mimeograph in the office and I would get to run off worksheets for my teacher, it was so much fun and I’ll never forget that wonderful smell!! Thanks for the awesome video I haven’t thought about this in so many years and it was really fun remembering those good times!! 😊
It's funny my son laughed when I said Overhead Projector once.
Your son knew what an overhead projector was???
Jim Urrata The only reason he knew was when he was little I took him to get our silhouettes done at a craft fair. I explained to him as kids we all had our heads done in school & how the teacher did it was by using an overhead projector. 1960's & he was born in '96.
I REMEMBER
Oh, the thought of that smell takes me back to school. Just think of what we thought was a long time in school preparing for adulthood. It was hardly any time at all.
I learned to use the machine in elementary in the 60's and it came in handy when I worked in a small 12 bed hospital in the 90's because using the copying machine for routine forms was very expensive and yes I loved that smell................
Me too
Oh how I remember the blurry purple ink of the ditto machine, which seemed worse when teachers wrote in cursive instead if typing their handouts!
I was a student aid for a Math class in my High School Senior year 1979 and on occasion the teacher would send me to make "ditto copies". I don't remember so much the smell while running them off, but I do remember breathing them in, all the way back to the classroom, the smell was intoxicating! The closest thing I've run onto that smells like a ditto, is the smell after squishing a squash beetle. Ironically, chickens will not eat or get too close to them (to squash beetles)... and chickens have no sense of smell supposedly, lol!
It was such a wonderful and uplifting smell! Despite that it was huffing I do miss that smell. Fresh ditto sheets were always the best 😂
I remember them from school, the slightly damp purple print and the vinegary smell. One of the slower kids cracked up the whole class when he said ‘sir you have such neat handwriting!’ after the teacher distributed mimeographed handouts typed on a cursive typewriter.
My first ever job was working in photocopier room for a big enterprise when photocopiers were new and hugely expensive. There were two huge photocopiers in the room behind a counter. People had fill out a form signed by their boss to get photocopying done by me, the new kid straight out of school. I had no idea who anyone was or what signature was what. I just did everything put in the in-tray.
My elementary school teacher let me do mimeos for her. I really felt special doing her work for her.
I remember in the mid 1960's when the teacher would scan the class room looking for someone to help turn the crank.
The best was being teacher’s pet. I got to help with the running off of new homework sheets. The smell was like heaven.
Lmao.. i really dont think he was literally referring to the smell of anything.... i think its some kind of phrase... but i could be wrong
Ummm... Yeah your wrong. Guess your to young!
😐
The old days seemed much more fun, worth living. Simple, uncomplicated times.
There were plenty of problems then too.
That's called nostalgia. It isn't based on fact.
The old days were fun.
Toxic too
@@KennethD000 that’s for sure. Glorifying the past is a trait too many people have. Wasn’t easy then either, that’s why there is change because things sucked then too. Think about it longer🧐
I was a Chicago Public School teacher back in the 1970's The kids and the parents like them because the kids did not have to copy the work off the black bored. You are so right every one knew that smell. It was a good time to be a teacher!
Some of the magic makers back in the 60s & 70s smelled really good, almost give you a buzz!
Count the 80s and 90s as decades these were used as well. My school had them the entire time I was there (1979-1992).
OMG 😳!!! Oh how I remember these mimeograph & Ditto machines when I was in high school back in the 70’s and when I became a teacher & librarian back in the 80’s & 90’s!! Then it all changed!!
Thank you for posting these wonderful memories!! 🙏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🙋🏻♀️💙
Those purple hand outs and we even had purple band music. Memories!
"The smell of a freshly printed Ditto is one of those smells we never forget." How true! I loved that smell! It never is lost to time.
Still used them at my primary (elementary) school in Australia in the late 1980s using a 1970s Fordigraph machine. Modern photocopies had taken over by the time high school arrived in the early 90s.
RR my friend you are taking me back to my youth. My father was big into the RC model airplanes and he had mimeograph and used it to print out the meeting minutes for the club and yes I remember the smell lol
I remember in middle school when I was allowed to fill the alcohol tank and crank the handle, I felt like GOD!
I remember those assignments very, very well! 🤣
Wonderful episode! Yes I remember that incredible odor that emanated from a freshly mimeographed sheet. One of those sheets instructed me that odor is a noun and smell is a verb. Likewise taste is a verb and flavor is a noun. Hint hint.
I went through elementary school in the last half of the 1950's. The mimeograph machine was a motorized model that was placed on a table/desk on the stairwell landing between the first and second floor. Can't ever forget the machine or the smell! What a memory!!!
The teacher attendance sheets, the very special, well behaved students got to collect them from every classroom. What a sweet memory and a GREAT smell!!!
I started elementary school in 1973 - ditto fluid smell lives rent free in my memories 💜💜
My mom was an elementary teacher so I had lots of opportunities to smell it even at home. We also had a hectograph, which was a totally manual process that used a pan of gelatin as the transfer medium; generally for home use because of the low number of copies that could be made and the length of time to make them.
Teacher's kid too, cranked out many a copy before class started for the rest of the kids... I can still taste that smell.
I remember. My adult children are missing out.
I was in elementary school starting in 1965. I’d love to smell a warm, damp ditto copy again
We started about the same time and I agree completely. We always loved the fresh copies but generally speaking they'd already been done hours before by the time we got them.
It just had a very unique aroma. I've never come across anything like it since that time.
In kindergarten, back in 1971, I carried a mimeographed paper home in the rain. When I got home, I told my mother, "This paper is covered with purple rain."
You where an inspiration for Prince and you didn’t even know it.
😐
I remember the day our teacher dropped the can of fluid. She had to go home and change her dress. The principal took her class and got angry because we kept laughing.
I remember something even more primitive, the Gestetner machine, for which you had to cut a stencil on a special typewriter and make copies from that. I used to make mistakes in the stencil and had to paint over the error with a sort of glue (horrible-smelling pink stuff like nail polish), and then type over the error. The thing was hand-cranked and made copies about as fast as a Gutenberg press. This was used as recently as the mid-1980s in an office I worked in (a credit union).
I recall mimeograph from school but can’t recall ever sniffing one. Where I worked, the front office had an old copy machine that took two stages. First, you had to put your original with a piece of pink film over it pink down over the light source. Expose it to the light. Then put the film on the specialty blank paper and run it through the developer rollers. You needed a new pink sheet for each copy. Things got whole much easier and faster when the next one used a toner cartridge and could print multiple copies.
I go into Staples and I want to say to the guy, "will you mimeograph this for me?" No no I think, that's too old a term. Then I think, I'll ask him to xerox this...no, no.
Oh, I need 30 copies.
I actually asked for "carbon paper" at Staples a few weeks ago. I needed it for an art project. The kid working there looked at me like I was from Mars.
@@azmike1 Did have have any typewriter ribbons?
@R J -- Especially if you get a say, 22 year old clerk at Staples! You want me to Mimeo....what?? heehee!
Had these types of hand-outs in a Philadelphia Catholic grade school in the 80's - I went to high school in 1989 and they were still handing them out for our final exams at the end of 8th grade
couldn't wait to get my copy when they were passed out. Smell soooo good. Almost good as the smell of gasoline being pumped into a car while you sat in the backseat.
😐
I clearly remembered that smell right through high school in (I graduated in 1979). It was the early 1980's when laser-based xerography machines finally replaced the Mimeograph and Ditto machines.
Great video...brought back so many memories...I started first grade in 1967...Queens N.Y. I wish I could go back ..even for just one day..📠
My days back in Kindergarten and 1st Grade. The 1980s, I miss those good old days.
I remember the blue ditto quizzes the teachers would pass out in school.
My school days were back in the 60's and 70's and I remember them as well.
Speaking of getting "high" to school supplies, I seem to recall a clearish, thick liquid glue that game in a brown glass jar. The lid had an applicator brush attached to it.
You could take a trip without leaving the farm.
i agree, once you smell it, you'll always know that smell
Yep, my little office chores was operating both of those machines. I was in high school, as an elective I believe working in the principle's office. Also, I operated the main telephone switchboard. Kinda fun in the 70's 🙂
In elementary school was a big treat to get those ditto copies, usually meant we were doing something fun not for a mark.
My father was a teacher and he would bring home ditto masters and I would scribble on them and he would bring home copies. I remember the smell.
Not only was there a strong chemical odor but fresh copies were warm and damp.
All the kids would smell the paper when the teacher handed the test to them. I wish I could smell that again. It sure would take me right back to 1965.
I remember the handouts and the scent, but never actually saw any of the machines. Great video!
The warm ones were fresh off the machine. They always had a vaguely mayonaisey scent to me. It's been almost 40 years since I graduated high school but I can still recall that smell. Thanks for taking me back, at least for a moment.