Aug. 8, 1876: Run This Off on the Mimeo
By Randy Alfred
1876: Thomas Edison receives a patent for the mimeograph. It will dominate the world of small-press-run publication for a century.
Before the inkjet printer, before the laser printer, before the dot-matrix printer, before the photocopier, there came the mimeograph machine. They were everywhere — in schools, offices and the military. If you needed just a few copies of a document, you used carbon paper. If you needed thousands (and had the time and the budget), you could send it to a print shop for typesetting and publication. But if you needed something in between, say 30 copies for a classroom handout (or test!) or 500 or 1,000 for a church bulletin or incendiary revolutionary poster, you had the mimeograph.
Before the light bulb lit up in his laboratory, before he pioneered the power station, before he recorded "Mary had a little lamb" in the first practical phonograph, before he made motion pictures work and then made motion pictures, before 1,000 or so other inventions and improvements great and small, Edison invented the mimeograph.
Those of us who are old enough to remember the mimeo can probably conjure up the smell of its ink -- especially ink for the Dittograph or spirit duplicator, which handled the smaller press runs. Those who actually used to "run things off" on the machines probably remember the look and feel of its sometimes-delicate stencils. Those who are younger may not even know how the word is pronounced. It's MIM-EE-oh-graf, not MYME-oh-graf or MEEM-oh-graf. Ask your parents.
The process is simple: Cut a stencil, push ink through the holes onto paper, and repeat. The business model is also simple: Sell the machine, sell the stencils, sell the ink, maybe even sell the paper, but there might be competition there.
Edison's 1876 patent covered a flatbed duplicating press and an electric pen for cutting stencils. Chicago inventor Albert Blake Dick improved the stencils while experimenting with wax paper and merged his efforts with Edison's. The A.B. Dick Co. released the Model 0 Flatbed Duplicator in 1887. It sold for $12 ($270 in today's money).
If you didn't want to use the electric pen, you could try cutting a stencil with one of those newfangled typewriters. But hand drawing of stencils persisted well into the 20th century for diagrams of sentences and diagrams of scientific concepts, as well as mathematical formulas that were beyond the scope of the typewriter keyboard.
Later models replaced Edison's original flatbed press and hand roller for the ink with a rotating cylinder and an automatic feed from the ink reservoir. Deluxe models included an electric motor. You could also get cheaper ones that you had to crank by hand.
The A.B. Dick Co. believes almost every U.S. military personnel order of World War II was run off on one of its machines. And so central is the mimeograph to the history of 20th-century education that the Columbia University Teachers College is planning a special exhibit on the mimeograph at its library today.
We saw that on the web, not on a mimeographed flyer.
So, on this day, 132 years ago, Thomas Edison 'offically' began to create the technologies that resulted in the world we live in.
Shit, I feel old... not only did I get mimeographed tests all through school, I have used a hand-cranked mimeograph while I was a office aide in highschool to create those tests!
Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
Shit, I feel old... not only did I get mimeographed tests all through school, I have used a hand-cranked mimeograph while I was a office aide in highschool to create those tests!
So it's Edison's fault that I had to squint at those illegible purple pages all through elementary school? Damn him.
"Stop! No one can survive these deadly rays!"
"These deadly rays will be your death!"
- Thor and Akton, Starcrash
"Before man reaches the moon your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles.... We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."
- Arthur Summerfield, US Postmaster General 1953 - 1961
Faded purple ink and paper that always seems to shed graphite.
I think I got away from those when I was a sophomore. The bug clunky xerox machine made my eyeballs very happy. (They always seemed to have been watering down the mimeo ink or something. Crap was almost painful to decipher at times.)
That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.
That which does kill me better evac before I respawn.
Viridian wrote:Faded purple ink and paper that always seems to shed graphite.
I remember the purple ink. The sheets of paper had that funny smell and were cool to the touch when the teacher handed out the freshly-made copies. This was throughout most of my elementary school years, in the early 80s especially.
