Before copy machines, how were copies made?

Posted on February 27, 2010 by admin


carbon paper- like a wax imprint that reproduced the original…and those ditto machines where everything came out sort of purple- i remember getting to use them atschool as a reward for different things…..haha i feel old. the ditto machine had a specific smell, too…takes me back

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8 Responses to Before copy machines, how were copies made?

  1. jenofur says:
    February 28, 2010 at 2:40 am

    Probably by hand… ;-)
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  2. redhawgs says:
    February 28, 2010 at 3:07 am

    carbon paper and then ditto machines.
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  3. robby_anna says:
    February 28, 2010 at 3:24 am

    carbon paper- like a wax imprint that reproduced the original…and those ditto machines where everything came out sort of purple- i remember getting to use them atschool as a reward for different things…..haha i feel old. the ditto machine had a specific smell, too…takes me back
    References :

  4. wolf_whitefeather says:
    February 28, 2010 at 3:56 am

    mimeograph
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph
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  5. schazjmd says:
    February 28, 2010 at 4:33 am

    Mimeograph machines. You prepared a "negative" of your document, attached it to a drum, and turned the drum to print "positive" copies. I forget where the ink went — it usually got all over your hands anyway.
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  6. Jim N says:
    February 28, 2010 at 4:47 am

    Before dry copiers, there were wet copiers called mimeograph machines. You started with an over sized blue master page and either stenciled your writing in a typewriter or wrote by hand on it. The pressure broke the film (like silk screening) and when you were finished you peeled off the master and attached it to a drum roller in the mimeo machine. Alcohol and ink completed the process and you hand cranked the mimeo master around and around while paper was fed it one sheet at a time. The copy was purple on white typing paper. Lots of work and it’s how teachers used to make pass-out sheets and write test questions. I can still remember the smell of mimeos–that alcohol was great for becoming an ingrained memory. Hope this is a better answer than "they did it by hand". That kind of goes back to the monks who hand copied and "illuminated" the scrolls they copied with all that delicious religious art adorning the first letters and sometimes adding illustrations to the page.
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  7. grey terrier says:
    February 28, 2010 at 5:20 am

    Carbon copy, Thermofax, Cyclostyle.

    This article is quite informative:
    http://teched.vt.edu/gcc/HTML/PrintingsPast/BeforeCopies.html
    References :

  8. no_einstein says:
    February 28, 2010 at 6:01 am

    Ancient times, scribes did most of the copying by ink on papyrus, etchings on clay, or stone. Later on in history, copy clerks by quill and ink, or rudimentary printing press by hand, then by machines by newspapers, then by carbon paper, then ditto machine, then photocopiers.
    References :