Old Copy Machine With Blue Ink

Both pieces of paper are stained with purple ink because they went through a machine invented in 1923 called a ditto machine or spirit duplicator.

Old copy machine with blue ink.

A ditto machine was a primitive photocopier that used a solvent like methylated spirits or ammonia to transfer ink from the master copy the template if you will onto other pieces of paper. I guess we changed those. They have now been replaced by digital duplicators scanners laser printers and photocopiers but for many years they were the primary means of reproducing documents for limited run distribution the duplicator was pioneered by thomas edison and david gestetner with gestetner dominating the market up until. I believe that you are referring to a mimeograph machine.

There were two cylinders with a silkscreen belt running on them. The stencil duplicator or mimeograph machine is a low cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The stencil was thin rubber backed with paper and it was critical to get this on right while peeling the paper backing. The mimeograph process should not be confused with the spirit duplicator process.

The ink came in tubes. The blue process while a number of technologies that used photosensitive paper to copy documents were invented beginning in 1842 the first of these technologies that was commercially important was the blue process while the blue process was well established in europe by the early 1870s it was not introduced in the us until 1877. We just cleaned it out to change color. In the late 1960s.

Mimeographs along with spirit duplicators and hectographs were a common technology in printing small quantities as in office work classroom materials and church bulletins. Duplicating machines were the predecessors of modern document reproduction technology. The master for the ditto was only good for a limited number of copies as the solvent spirit dissolved the surface of the ink on the master allowing it to be transferred to the special paper. It did not always produce high quality copies and the ink could be messy.

It didn t use a drum. However the cost of early photocopiers was quite high. Ditto machines made the purple copies that faded over time faster with exposure to light.