SHORT: Hectograph
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
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Developed in the 1870s, the Hectograph (also spelled Hektograph) was an early document copying process which used a tray of gelatine to transfer ink from a master sheet onto copy pages. Extremely simple and easy to construct under primitive conditions, they were extensively used by underground political groups and prisoners of war to secretly print documents.
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Any one else old enough to remember the smell of class handouts hurriedly just-prepared by the frazzled teacher on the Banda machine (spirit duplicator) in the staff room, and the teacher telling everyone off for holding the pages to their noses! 😆
Yes, that was the Gestetner mimeograph and the smell was remnants of the wood alcohol it used.
Yes, indeed. I was just thinking of that myself.
Oh yes, that paper was so aromatic. The whole 4th grade was addicted to duplication.
Interesting. When was this?
@@SuperFranzs Mostly 1970’s and early 80’s was my experience.
I remember getting a hectograph for a birthday present in the 1950s, and used it to make a few issues of a "Neighborhood Times" newspaper, since I was interested in printing. Years later in high school several of us came up with the idea of an underground school newspaper when we found a Ditto carbon in the trash, almost unused because of an error the teacher in the first line (no correcting those originals!). I resurrected the hectograph and we created our 1-page master by working the teacher's original error into a wise-** comment. The typing classroom wastebasket supplied our "blank" paper and we were in business! It was a great success at school. Though we never managed to get beyond 25 copies per original, we did create about 10 issues. I even looked up formulas for different color inks and got the help of the chemistry teacher in creating them to fancy up the headlines and drawings, and to free us from having to swipe Ditto carbons. I still have a set of all the issues we published. The printing has held up well for over 60 years, but the high school humor not so much.
Sound hilarious.
In the 1980's I helped a friend publish a small magazine for a college fraternity, & used Hectograph. You must make the copies promptly, as the ink diffuses in the gelatin, causing the characters to "bloom" if you wait too long. You can remelt & recast the gelatin, even though it has been used. The ink diffuses & becomes diluted enough to not cause ghost prints. You can also put on blotter sheet & absorb the ink out if you have a few days.
Thank you for this post. I was wondering how many copies could be made and how you might use the gelatin for a different master.
I remember wiping the tray with a hot sponge before transferring the new print as part of the process from my childhood.
At last I now know what that office press was used for for. The one that Moe used to clamp Curly's head in all the time.
That was also known as a "letter press" and was used to compress sheets of paper before binding or wrapping for storage. BTW, sometimes it was used to cure Curly's headaches, which you could tell when it went "pop!" at the end 🙂
@@hagerty1952 Bookbinders use presses like this as well, commonly called "nipping presses" for just a quick pressing job. For longer time in the press, a larger "standing press" would be used.
None of which has much to do with "letterpress" a.k.a. relief printing.
You summoned the Hektogragh by writing its name three times! RIP
The brown paper you used is supposed to be removed. That was to produce the aniline purple sheet from scratches. The first piece is the mastersheet.
Exactly. I used one of these to print a family newsletter back in the early 1970s. Throw the brown paper away and use the other white sheet (the one with the carbon imprint on it). The results are nearly as good as any mimeograph machine. They even had color spirit masters back in the day. Red, Green, Blue, Purple was standard, Also when changing to a new master, simply melt the jello in a saucepan and re pour it in the tray. That will work lots of times, and will evemtually become quite purple but will still make copies, albeit you will get some purple background going but still quite usable. Country schools used these back in the early years up into the 1960s where I'm from (Nebraska). Montgomery ward had them in the mail order catalogs into the mid 70s. That's where I got mine.
Our primary school in New Zealand used one in the 1970s. @@jerrykautz6572
My mother was a school teacher in a very small district. Back in the 1950s she used the whole hectograph system to make work sheets etc for her classroom, and I often helped. She used, then melted, and re-used the gelatin till it was really purple and made lots of really nice copies. Amazing technology back then.
My dad and I used to use one for copying stuff for the Scouts! We got directions from a children's encyclopedia. That was in the 50s & 60s!
My parents did the same for cub scouts in the early 80s. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
One suggestion for a story: the Curta calculator. Incredible handheld mechanical calculating machine, astonishingly developed by a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during the war.
My father bought one new, and I still have it. I have lots of old watches, clocks, cameras... but this is by far my favorite.
The classic detective stories of R Austin Freeman often mentioned using hectograph jelly to make copies. I always wondered how it worked. Never thought it would be this simple.
Wow. When I was a kid in the early 60s, my brother and I had a commercially made branded Hectograph that my father dug up somewhere. We would do things like write our own newspaper.
I had one as a kid in the early 1960s. I received it as a present due to my general interest in printing so I don't know how it was marketed. I enjoyed it as designed for a couple of years and then, as my interest in photographic darkroom work increased, I found it useful as a borderless easel. I stuck a L shaped piece of mat board down for registration and could use a plain piece of paper as a framing and focusing target replacing it with photographic paper for the print. The adhesion was just right for this.
When I was in High School, I used a hectograph to create a weekly newsletter for our neighbors. The gelatin can be scraped up, reheated, and poured again to create a fresh surface. After printing, the ink would gradually settle down to the bottom of the hectograph and you could use it for a new run. Ah, memories! The hectographs was dirt cheap--less that $10 at Sears.
My Teachers actually used that Hektograph system, jell print directly onto paper, in the 1950s, before we got a Memograph machine. This was in West Virginia, which was a progressive State back then.
The purpose of the glycerin in the gelatine is that it stops the mass from drying out. When you needed to erase the hectograph ready for a new print pour some alcohol over the jelly and torch it (only for a hectograf in a metal tray, not paper ones!). This melts the upper layer and seales the unused ink. This is black magic - blue flames in the night. Different colours of inks could be used, but I never tried that. I used a roller to press the inked paper to the jelly and also to make copies. I used it until around 1983. I still have a few hectograph stencils (master sheets) and the tray. Don't ask my why. Ink could be made by dissolving part of the aniline wax in alcohol. The mimeograph was a great leap forward.
I also have a few copying pencils. One from my father and a few that were intended for some unknown use in Danish Civil Defence. I think that the idea could be to make a written document that could not be erased after it was made slightly damp. But then, why not a roller pen?
I recently made some marking ink (like Dykem ink) from one of those stencils. It also inks your hands.
My mother had a jellygraph. It got brought out for doing low run (less than two dozen) copies and I distinctly remember having a warm damp cloth put over it before it was stored. The edges of the gelatin in the tray were a bit dry, but I don't recall her ever scraping out and replacing the gelatin in the tray, so it likely had a decade+ life.
it is beautiful to see how clever humans are.
In The Borrowers Afloat the Clock family catch up with Aunt Lupy and Uncle Hendreary who are living in a wall space. Arietty has to be careful as their dining table is a square door plate with pencils coming up through the screw holes for legs. Homily warns her not to touch the pencil near her elbow because it was a copying pencil.
Being a stationery nerd I just had to go down that rabbit hole and went on the net to find out all about them.
Edit: I'm 58 but I re-read the whole series last year. The first Sci-fi I ever read.
Cool! I used this technology when I was a kid to produce a neighborhood newspaper. Your explanation is spot on and easy to understand.
My mother was a schoolteacher and I remember her using a hectograph. It was commercially made and she would make papers for her class, one 3rd grade in the school.
Makes me think of silly putty copying the text from a newspaper
You just helped me learn that hectare and hecate have a shared etymology! Neat.
I made a hektograph when I was a kid, back then mimeograph machines were still being used in my school and my teacher gave me a couple sheets of the copy paper. The recipe I followed used glycerine and it worked quite well.
I used to make flat hectograph tablets when a kid. The best results were with gelatin/barium sulfate mix and using aniline ink. It was possible to salvage the gel of a used tablet by heating it with some water, pouring off the inky excess and recasting it. In those days you could buy compatible typewriter ribbons.
I have actually run into one of those copying pencils earlier in life and I had no idea why anyone would make a pencil like that until now. I guess now I know why, thank you.
Dad was listening to this (in the same room), and mentioned "I used those when I was a kid".
He was born during WW2.
Really cool! 👍👍👍
I remember back then, that Clas Ohlsson, a chain of shops here in Sweden, very similar to Radio Shack meets Hobby Lobby, sold a hectograph kit (for kids).
Ah, my favourite device channel at the right time; how pleasantly convenient! :)
Spirit paper has been used for decades with a thermofax machine or by hand tracing designs for transferring patterns to skin for tattooing, using propylene glycol (Speedstick) as a semi liquid medium.
I was reading on these, and the mimeograph / spirit duplicator a while back, so am VERY glad to see your usual high quality videos on the subject of these now!
Too bad Wikipedia blocks RUclips videos is all i can say. Maybe you could upload a segment as a MP4 or whatever?
Heck yeah, a7 min short!
I've actually used those master sheets at 3:21 when I was little for writing training... I struggled a lot to write properly on paper due to how I was holding my pen (relatively long hands and fingers). At the time Stabilo made pens that were sold as "more ergonomic" but were absolutely terrible to hold (at least for me) and had a rollerball made of plastic, so there was a lot of writing resistance.
In class these master sheets were used to determine how I was holding my pen, and mainly how much pressure I held to the paper. Due to the thickness of the lines in the transfer paper it was determined that I actually wrote best with a LAMY fountain pen, after I learned how to back-stroke it properly (not bend the tip)
((Sidenote: yes I am aware how dirty that last sentence sounds, - my fingers were absolutely slathered with ink at the time))
All kidding aside, that transfer paper actually helped a lot, and I still use LAMY pens to this day! (was around 2008 or so when I was a young kid at school, I like to think that isn't that long ago...)
Fellow arachnodactyly-ite, I also found “ergonomic” pens and pencil-grip-addons to make things significantly worse. And also found fountain pens to be a solution!
While I do like Lamy’s mildly-ergo grip (significantly better than triangular pencil grips) my weapon of choice is a TWSBI Eco right now. And yeah, my fountain pens as a kid leaked everywhere from misuse too!
Something else which caused me all sorts of problems were chopsticks. I eventually found I was alright with square ones, not the round ones people kept trying to teach me with. But I have to hold them in a slightly weird way. Which is not quite the same as the slightly weird way I have to hold pens, but it’s definitely similar.
Interesting, @@kaitlyn__L! I also use chopsticks kinda like pens, but don't use them often enough to really notice a difference 😉
I must say, that learning to use chopsticks was a lot easier for me, but that may have been due to how I was trained to use pens differently in the first place 😅
As a videographer I rarely write anymore, but I'll definitely look in to that pen!
Finding something ergonomic I've learned is just by looking what feels right, I've found some stuff by IKEA to be better for example than some really expensive office chairs...
@@kaitlyn__L Oh yea, and those pencil grip addons... I ended up using one as an eraser, and worked surprisingly well for erasing ball pen ink 😂
We had one of these at home in the 1960s. We had a lot of fun with it. We bought it from a craft store. It had a tray and the gelatin mix and some dye paper. We typed up a family newsletter on our family typewriter. I typed up many papers in grade school on that typewriter and I still have it.
That brownish tissue-paper sheet is a protection sheet, not a usable master sheet. Your copies will look better if you use the proer sheet.
Today we put originals into a copier and don't think much about what's going on inside the machine. Devices like this one made office activity much simpler as a copy didn't have to be manually written like before. Clever use of gelatine!
My dad was an office junior in a lawyers' office that used a copy book/letter press for letters. This would have been in 1944/5, I think.
If you'd like help with german pronunciation, I'd be willing to send examples for any words or phrases you'd send me for future videos
Thanks for this. As I mentioned in a comment on your Gestetner video I remember a primary school teacher used this method to prepare notes and worksheets for us back in the 1970s, but I didn't know what it was called or exactly how it was done.
Thank you for another informative video! Love this series.
Another good one Gilles.I particularly like old methods of copying, mostly because they're clever but also there's a great variety of them.
Thanks. I still have some work sheets from second grade in rural Texas that my teacher and I made using one of these. It was the only duplicating “machine “ the school had.
Had these at school in the 60s and 70s.
5:44 General Patton speaks in his memoirs about an Attack Order in World War I (probably 1918) wherein late notice was taken of allied artillery firing on a line where allied infantry was expected to be at the same time. The response was, the 'jelly roll' was already prepared so the order would go out as given.
I feel like there's a connection from these to the modern "Gelli" plates used in arts and crafts. The big difference is that they are usually used for one copy per master, but maybe with the right ink you'd have the plate hold it and pull multiple.
Great subject, Sir. Well researched as usual.
Adding glycerine to the gelatine plasticises it. So it doesn't have to be stored in a fridge, and it doesn't go mouldy.
This process was in regular use at my primary school until shortly before I left in 1968 when they acquired a spirit duplicator. 7:05
When I was a kid i the '60s I was given a toy copier that I believe worked on this principle.
You forgot one thing: how the gelatine was erased so it could be reused. Sure it could be run out, but there'd still be a faint impression if you did that. I certainly got sheets like that in the 80s at school. Even up to 1991!
But it's better to melt it in an oven. The gelatine was so thick that it would only stay liquid until not long after it cooled to room temperature. It also cooled rather quickly being flat. And of course several gelatine pads could be prepared.
A nun and former school teacher I met once had a nasty scar on her wrist. She got it taking the hot tray out of the oven hurriedly and got a burn similar to hot sugar.
That almost, but not quite, looks like the purple-colored copies that teachers used to make back in my elementary school. I'm guessing they actually used some descendant of the ditto machine, though they also called it a 'mimeo' machine.
I suspect, from the other comments here and some other videos, that it was some flavor of spirit duplicator, but I don't recall a particularly strong alcohol scent. I do recall the pages being warm, if I was the one handing them out from a fresh stack, so maybe my school baked them to drive off the alcohol or something?
But also, I recall there being graphics, not just handwritten and typed text. I'm not quite clear how those would have been made; pre-made stamps? Pre-made sections of ink you'd stick to the master? I think, but I'm not sure, that those might have been misaligned sometimes...
Side note: in Italy we still use copying pencil for elections as it is considered harder to tamper than if using pens.
In his book 'On Writing', Stephen King tells us about a newspaper he and his brother printed and sold as kids in his neighborhood, using this printing method.
This is really interesting. I'm in printing myself (35plus years) and the only reason I know about this jelly graph is something my father told me about. My dad was in the Czech army (working as a printer) in the 1960s. He was in a mobile printing unit in the army. Apparently some officers were demonstrating a new way of duplicating which involved trays of jelly etc. and my dad said, "this is the dumbest thing to be using in a field during battle, what idiot came up with this?" The officers were kind of quiet for a while and then it came out that it was their idea. Anyway the upshot was that if it came to war and the Czech army (and the Warsaw Pact) forces were to invade Germany my father was given the authority to requisition any and all printing plants in Germany. He resigned the army after the 68 Russian invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Hectograph? What in the world did they think they needed one for, the man has been dead these three thousand years, and we already HAVE the *measure* of him, immortalised . . . He was "The Great".
I think the Rote Kapelle (the german name for the soviet spy ring) was active throughout Western Europe but mainly in Paris and Brussels with tentakels reaching Berlin etc. Nice item nevertheless!
Thank you
Thank you, yes it was, facinating.
Fascinating.
Yes the channel is growing!!!
Bet the Germans wondered why there were so many packs of Jello in the Red Cross packages!
I seem to recall a process for copying used by the Union Army in the US Civil War for copying maps. I don't remember the specifics.
Roger, copy that. Out.
Is this the same technology used with the commercial brand "Gelli" printing plates? It's used today in combination with acrylic paint for doing mono-printing of art prints.
Thanks for the interesting video (NZ).
Built one with my dad when I was in elementary school! Could never find the recipe again.
We just did gravity feed.
Thank you.
Your test may have been handicapped by the fact that the dye might not transfer very effectively from the waxy spirit duplicator ink to the water-based gelatin.
There isn’t any patent that I know of for hectographs. All the patents that are available are all for use of aniline dye. 🤔 This suggests to me that this might have been a prior art. Development of Gelatin is lost to time so it really can’t be dated that way, other inks might work but documents produced this way would be quite fragile (particularly if sugar was used as the humectant) hectographs are interesting in that we actually really can’t effectively pin down when they might have come into existence.
So you could make a typeset (like a printing press) and make a thin jello mold, then ink it and print....I get the idea of copying with a pen or pencil but.... in another world someone made a jello mold for the next days news, let it set and used it as a press....
Wow another great educational video, thanks.
You could make Zines!
Thats why in old movies you'd see reporters wet the tip of their pencils on their tongue begore writing, aniline embedded leads?
No, not too likely. The reporter -> editor -> copy editor -> typographer process was typically done with plain paper, and a pencil, pen, or typewriter. A lot of people developed the habit of putting the pencil tip against their lips or tounging it simply as a way to increase concentration while thinking of how to word something, or while remembering exactly what they saw. Pencils on rough (cheap) paper could also develop small dust particles, which could shed on the paper and result in hard to read copy. Licking the pencil lead would clean it up, resulting in clearer copy.
And NO, pencil "lead" doesn't contain lead, and hasn't for centuries. So forget about the fables of them sucking on leaded paint because it tasted sweet. Just not the case.
@@lwilton Pencil lead is graphite and clay yes, but lead based paint contains lead acetate, which is white, and opaque. This is sweet, and the Romans used to take sour wine, which basically had fermented into close to vinegar, and boil it in lead pots, where the acetic acid in the wine would react with the lead to form lead acetate, making the wine sweet again. Also making it long term toxic as well, an unintended side effect. But they did use the poor quality wine up.
C'mon, I didn't mean the element lead (Pb). I accept your second theory more than the first, I mean, if thinking somehow induces an oral reflex, why not the erasure end? So, no.
But I think some copy pencils were color pencils and wetting them was a reflex habit.
Wait… is the copying pencil also linked to why so many commercial artists drew line-art in blue pencil prior to inking?
I’d always assumed that was just to get better contrast between pencil and ink, but given artists started using photocopiers for “inking” as soon as they were available… maybe they were already using various copying machines in the 30s?
I should look into this.
Modern comic artists use blue pencils because scanners won't pick up the color, while they will pick up the black ink lines.
@@stockicide see, that was my first assumption (the contrast when actually, physically, inking). But I do know a lot of comics that are not really inked, where they look just like the pencil lines but black.
@@kaitlyn__L I've seen some comics from the 60's like that. I would guess that they used regular pencil lines as guidelines, and then drew with something like sharpened charcoal or chalk pastel overtop.
@@stockicide by the 60s “xerox inking” was becoming more and more common, so I’m assuming that (or a similar technology for computer scanners) is the case any time after the 60s.
It’s mainly about the ones from the beginning of the century I’m curious about in my first comment 😊 it’s possible they were all hand-copied. The ones printed from wood blocks certainly had more manual transfer processes involved!
You never cease to surprise with the most random out there stuff. 🤗
Do you guys remember Silly Putty ? That could be used for copying as well 😊
Thank you very much, Governor! (in my best British accent).
But gelatin won't get you high like a ditto copy
I've never seen Ks written like that. However, now that I look closer at my keyboard, that IS how they are written 😮 I guess I've been writing my Ks wrong all this time 😅
good stuff!
What happened to the crystal radio video? (vid: PngcKJEKmis)
Looks like it was deleted around 2024-01-13. Can you share why?
Aniline dye was unfortunately carcinogenic.
I made one and it worked. Can you still buy the ink ?
Are these sheets not the same as the copy sheets used in offices for decades to make instant duplicates on a typewriter? paper-copy sheet-paper etc, type once, duplicate to the other papers instantly? Or is that an other technique?
Sounds like you are talking about carbon copies. It was just a sheet of ink or dye that when struck or written upon, would leave imprint on the sheet behind it, directly. The same way check books, credit and card receipts worked in the 70s and 80s and 90s.
Interesting. I remember as a child seeing such black sheets of paper used to make copies in the office. They were even used in typewriters. But I remember most of the ideas regarding illegal printing from the memories of the anti-communist opposition from the 1980s. One memory of such a man was funny. He boarded the train and saw that all the passengers were looking at him strangely and running away from him. After a while he realized that it smelled like printing ink, but he couldn't smell it himself. None of his colleagues told him, because they all spent many hours in the smell and stopped feelt it.
Are you thinking of carbon paper which is still used and is readily available ? As well as copying writing it was commonly used in typewriters.
@@Rob-e8w "paper coated on one side with ink or pigment mixed with wax, used to make multiple copies of text simultaneously while writing it (by hand or on a typewriter)." Whether it was "carbon paper", I don't know, a different name was used in our country.
How long would those indego copy pencils last?
Like, 1 page, & require resharpening after every line?
Much more! My father used those for our farm book keeping, as they lasted very long, and also could not be wiped out with ordinary rubber erasers. Also, wetting would smear the text so bad, a counterfeit would be very evident. Oh yes, skin sweat would also pick the anilin from the pencil tip, so Mother immediately knew I had been playing with Father’s special pencil. Oh, not to mention what happened to my tongue, if I licked the pencil tip.
I have one and the 'lead' is quite hard. It's also thicker than a standard modern pencil but I'm not sure if that is typical of copy pencils or not. It takes quite a while for the point to wear down.
Ah, I didn't think of that!
Lead is very hard, graphite isn't. Their pencils were lead, but I'm used to graphite (#2), and graphite is soft. If those were lead based, that might average out.
@@Iowa599 I really doubt it was actual lead (Pb). More like an H hardness graphite pencil, I think? But it wrote darker because of the dye.
I don't have it to hand at the moment so I can't check to refresh my memory.
What the HECK!
🤣
Who else is here because of reading I Am Providence?
Yo
love 3 stooges haha
First, I don't care if I wasn't first I'm going to claim that I was in anyone who disagrees with me most duel me for it in Pokemon but they must provide actual real life Pokemon and not just a game
I want to fly around on a dragon dang it
Also i must add that I was actually the first person to say first the actual first post said yo
Ungewöhnlich seine eigene Sprache zu lesen 😅
Thank you