Hi Jeffery, I had a Gestetner that I used at the same time as the Spirit Duplicator to produce slightly longer runs of leaflets (at least it was a Gestetner type of machine), I had planned to do a video showing that machine as well, but I must have got rid of it at some time - still got a pack of the stencils for it but no machine.
I think the term (at least for a non-namebrand type thing) is “Mimeograph”. There are some great videos, even some goofy old training video, on them on RUclips!
Cheers Matt - I guess these things are black and white (or purple and white), you either go "wow, I remember those purple prints and that smell" OR you go "what on earth is he talking about?", - there's probably a mid 1980's cut off point, if you were at school after that time it'll just be alien technology. I love old processes like this, much more interesting than just printing it on an inkjet or laser printer.
It was always a special treat if you were chosen to help the teacher set up or use the Banda machine in the staff room (which they weren't really supposed to do). Partly because you got to see the staff room, partly because you were high as a kite for the rest of the lesson.
That would have been a cool job - I don't think I ever went into the staff room, but I do remember seeing inside through the open door one day - it was a smoky haze due to the fact that it was fairly normal for people to be smoking in there back in those days!!!! The Banda machines were a really great bit of old tech, pretty much anyone who was at school in those days will remember the prints.... and the aroma. Cheers for watching.
I found some old school books a few weeks ago, and there inside one of them was an old spirit duplicated sheet of teacher's notes - the smell had long gone but all of the feintness was still there!!!
Ah, that certainly does bring back memories, usually of examinations etc, I've always wondered how those faint purple copies were made on these machines, and yes! the smell of methanol that lingered for ages.
Yep, exams & tests, music lessons trying to squeeze notes out of a cornet (like a trumpet but smaller), homework and so on........ Cheers for watching.
That ending sniff. I loved smelling the copies as they handed it to me. Also I would love it when the teacher would send me to the little shed where an employee would make the copies.
Hi doncocor, I did have one person leave a comment who didn't like the smell of the old spirit duplicator copies, but from what I remember, most people I was at school with used to sniff the sheets as soon as they received them - I guess it was easier to keep kids amused before the invention of the iPhone.
Hahaha yeah! I was just thinking ... That employee in the little shed that made the copies must have been flying high 8 hours a day. Hahaha. @@GrumpyTim
Hi Reverend O'darn, they're something you can never forget - I bet there must be loads of faded old prints in dusty lofts all over the place, containing a wealth of long forgotten information and memories.
Wow, this brings back memories of those orange beasts seen lurking in the school staff room, along with the faded purple prints and unmistakable smell of solvent. Thanks!
Hi ChayD, yes, they were a very memorable bit of school days for lots of people, myself included. Somehow old gear like this is more exciting than it's modern equivalent.
Hi ohjajohh, I love old tech like this. At one time just about every school in the country would have had one of these machines and no one would have given it a second glance but then you skip forwards about 40 years and suddenly it's an interesting thing that people will either say "wow, I remember those" or "wow, I never knew those existed".
I remember Banda machines so well, when I started work the copy typists would prepare these, corrections were made with pink correcting fluid. The machines were so large they had a room dedicated for these machines --- the Banda Room. Strange to think how far we have come in such a short time.
Yeah Robert, progress has fairly zoomed. I still like to hold a printed copy in my hands rather than looking at something on screen, but the speed that you can create your document and get it to it's recipient these days is pretty hard to beat. There's something quite special when you have a whole room dedicated to duplicating machines!!!!
Hi JeffFrmJoisey, yeah, they were a pretty neat machine being able to print multicolour prints in a single pass, I hope you managed to keep a copy of your map, that would be a nice little keepsake.
They were quite a thing - can you imagine someone trying to use one in a school these days "I'm just going to let the pupils use this machine full of volatile, highly flammable liquid and breathe in the fumes for a couple of hours!!!"
Very cool.... I remember the smell on my elementary school days. The paper they used to copy on was of brownish color probably due to a higher content of wood.
Yeah, old paper tended to be less white than modern paper, some more so than others - your school may have been using a fairly affordable paper that didn't see much bleach in it's manufacturing. I used to work in the printing industry, and if I remember correctly, some of the brighter white papers had additional chemicals that would absorb some UV and turn it into visible light to make the paper look brighter - I'm not sure when they started doing that, but certainly during the time I was working in print, the war for who had the whitest paper was quite fierce.
Congrats on hitting the 1K mark, I link any of your relevant videos on the various forums I use so hopefully a few folks will hit subscribe after watching the video. Looking forward to the milestone video.
Cheers, 1000 seems like a miracle, can't believe I got there. Thanks for sharing some of my videos, I never knew that there were people helping me out behind the scenes. I was thinking of not doing a milestone video, it seems to both be a bit smug and also tempt fate for a load of people to unsubscribe!
It's a smell/experience that you can never forget - a bit like the smell of freshly ground coffee (not the actual smell, but the sensation it brings when you smell it) - takes me back to my childhood every time!!!
Hi Eric, it could of course be a boring as plain water for the last bit of the mix. Did they even have MSDS sheets when these things were in regular use - I started working in the printing industry about the time the spirit duplicators were being replaced by photocopiers and it was many years before I saw my first safety data sheet - it used to be "here son, use this chemical, it's perfectly safe" and then some years later "don't use that chemical, it causes (enter a serious health issue here)"!!! Happy days.....
Ha ha I remember these type of sheets when I was at school. They certainly had a distinct smell although most of the alcohol had long gone by the time the sheets got to us pupils. Not as bad as the die line machines I used in my first job which used ammonia, light sensitive paper and uv light which shone out of the machine like a beacon! Oh and an industrial sized extract fan to remove at least some of the noxious fumes! But it was the only way to copy big A0 sized plans back in the day.
I remember handling some of those die line prints, and the lingering smell of ammonia - I've never seen them being made, but my first job was in the printing industry and I spent many happy hours in a darkroom with a strong UV light and lots of chemicals, so I kind of get the idea. Stuff was fun then, although the introduction of large inkjet printers was pretty impressive at the time, but I miss the drama of the old methods.
@@GrumpyTim yes die line machines where huge beasts. As a planning officer I used to spend some of my time each week copying plans on it. You got into a rhythm doing it as each print needed to be done manually. The steps were as follows: take the yellow light sensitive paper out of its light proof container. Place the plan face up on top of it. Feed the two sandwiched together into the machine where strong uv light is shone through the plan through onto the light sensitive paper. The sandwich of paper would come out of the machine you would then separate the two putting the plan to one side. The uv light faded the yellow away where is wasn't covered by a dark line on the original plan. Feeding the copy into another slot on the machine exposed it to the ammonia which developed the print by Turing the remaining yellow to black. Hey presto a copy was made. Repeat for another print. Those were the days!
So that is why I seen a flexible duct coming out from the top on some of these huge printers/copiers and hung out of a window/terminated to a vent in the wall ~ because it used ammonia as a transfer/generates excess heat 😉
I remember those dye line machines from a temp job I got just after leaving college in the early '90s, many hours were spent inhaling ammonia fumes and shuffling massive sheets of paper 😅
I remember spirit duplicators. In my first job after college involved test reports. Handwritten notes were copy-typed by the office typist and eventually duplicated. I never knew how it worked, until now.
Thanks Peter, it's always good to find other people who remember this stuff. I really love old technology like this, really simple, not much to go wrong, and easy to repair when something does go wrong. Thanks for watching.
Hi BF Blethering, these machines would have been just about everywhere at one time, and virtually every school child would have received notes produced using this system. I guess the phasing out was pretty rapid, and as most of these machines would have been used in a working environment, not that many of them made their way into peoples lofts, ready to resurface 30 or so years later.
"The Scouts even used them to make 'hand outs'" - My Scoutmaster (circa 1969) discovered an older process, no machine. "Hectograph". Prepare a cookie sheet with a uniform layer of plain gelatin (dash of clove to retard mold). Same purple master as Ditto. Carefully lay the master on the gelatin, let soak, peel off. Now lay blank paper on the inked gelatin. You can pull several dozen copies before the ink fades. Tedious AF.
@@GrumpyTim Good work. You can now get monetized. Will not earn you loads but it adds up over time. I now have enough to buy a decent TIG if I wanted or perhaps a cheaper one and a lathe bed regrind for the Atlas.
Hi Stephen, I hadn't realised that the Banda name came from Block and Anderson, but that makes sense. I also hadn't realised that Block and Anderson actually made anything, I've often seen stuff like calculators and other office machinery with one of their stickers on the back (as the dealer who supplied whatever piece of equipment it was), so I figured they were just a supplier.
We used these in the office when I started work. If copies were need then up to 8 would be by carbon paper, above this it was the 'Banda' machine and photocopies were a two stage process of negative and developing and very expensive.
Hi Chris, I'd totally forgotten about using multiple carbon papers to create extra copies - I used to use carbon paper (and still do occasionally) to take a single copy of something I've typed, but of course, people used to use a stack of paper, carbon, paper, carbon etc and the copies got more feint as you went down the stack. I used to have a 3M 2stage photocopier but I think I gave it away ages ago because I couldn't find it when I went looking a couple of years ago. Pity, that would have made an interesting video. Thanks for watching and reminding me about multiple carbon copies.
We were still using Banda machines in classrooms here in NZ up until the early 90s. I always wondered if the term "bandied about" (for gossip), is a nod to the function of the Banda copier.
Hi Tom, it does make sense that some places carried on using the Banda machines for quite a while as they were vastly cheaper to use than most early photocopiers, and why invest in new equipment if you don't need to. I did a quick search about Bandied about, and from what I can find, the word "bandy" originated in the 16th century, meaning to pass a ball to and fro, and from that came the term bandied about, as in passing gossip from person to person. I never thought I'd be researching a 16th century word when I woke up this morning!!!!! Cheers for watching
@@GrumpyTim Ha! I had a hunch "bandy/bandied" well pre-dated the Banda machine! A bit like the word "crap" predating Thomas Crapper by several centuries! Clever marketing on Banda's part maybe. Thanks for your research! 👍😉
It's almost comical that it was the norm to hand out alcohol soaked paper to a classroom of school kids - of course they were going to inhale it!!! Probably not nearly as dangerous as it sounds but the fire officer would definitely have something to say about 5 litres of virtually neat alcohol, stored in a plastic bottle, sitting in the corner of the staff room, where in the 60s and 70s many of the staff would have been smoking away happily!!! Can't believe I finally made it to 1000 - it's been a bit of a struggle. You're zooming along with both your subscriber numbers and regular viewing numbers on your videos, I reckon you'll overtake me within a couple of months.
@@GrumpyTim Yeah, health and safety would have a field day with those things lol It was fairly slow at the beginning of the year, but it seems like I'm finally gaining some momentum on the channel. Next step, world domination! 😂
@@GrumpyTim Haha, don't worry, when I'm RUclips rich and my knees eventually give out from excessive electric skateboard falls and I need bionic legs, I'll commission you you build some for me using mechanical calculator parts and radioactive lenses!😂
I'd forgotten about the old blueprints - I didn't have much dealing with them, but I did handle some at one time and yes, that's another old process that had a smell that will bring back memories.
Martin These were super machines,I have used several types of spirit duplicator over the years and found the Foridigraph ones the best and I don't think there is a modern machine that will print 7 different colours with a single pass at the speed of the spirit process.
That's a very good point Martin, not to mention the running costs of either colour laser printers or inkjet printers. It's a largely forgotten technology nowadays, but virtually anyone who was at school in the 70s and before will have been given notes produced using a spirit duplicator at some point in time.
Yes, possibly some iteration of the process could come back, I suspect it would need to use something less volatile than Methanol as the solvent second time round!!! I can imagine plenty of organisations and individuals that could make use of the same or a similar process these days.
Yesterday i bought an Spirit Duplicater, but a much older one. I want to restore it and wanna use it. Please can you tell me what kind of master sheets you choose? Which one work best? There are matrix paper on the market for tatoos or blueprints with graphite. The alcohol i also dont have. But thankfully you show the ingredience. Great Video!
Hi Atheist1970, The master sheets I've got were ones I bought with the duplicator, so they were ones sold for the purpose. I guess you could just buy the cheapest ones you could find, or maybe talk to your friendly local tattooist and ask to try a single sheet before buying a whole pack. I would think that the mix for the fluid could be anywhere there or thereabouts, after all it's not really doing anything all that technical, just softening the waxy ink enough so some transfers to the paper. Hope you have lots of fun restoring and then using your cool bit of history.
I think Gestetner probably made other stuff too, but the stencil duplicators were often referred to as Gestetners regardless of who made them (a bit like Hoover or Sellotape). I had a Rex Rotary stencil duplicator but it appears to have been disposed of - I looked for it a couple of years ago and couldn't find it. The stencil duplicator system has a pair of drums with something not unlike a silk screen running between them. One of the drums has a sludgy ink pumped through it, which is distributed into the mesh of the silk screen (the ink only dries by absorption so it can get everywhere if you're not careful). Then you have a master which is some kind of loose fibre paper with a wax coating - when you type on the stencil using that stencil setting on your typewriter, the wax is pushed aside, leaving just the paper fibres, which the ink can pass through (there were other ways of making stencils, including big electric scanning/stencil cutting machines - you could also use a scriber to scratch in your design). The stencil was then wrapped round the outside of the silk screen and the printing could commence - the ink would squeeze through the fibres of the stencil and be pressed onto each sheet of paper as it passed through. All of the stencil duplicators I saw were electric powered, although most could be wound by hand as well. I still have a pack of the stencils but the machine itself seems to have gone - pity, I'd have liked to do a video on that one too.
Hi James, they're a quirky bit of history - many people will remember the smell, but unless they worked in an office, school or whatever, will never have seen the machine that made the prints. Cheers for watching and commenting.
Coo I'd never thought about that, but yes, an old dot matrix printer would create those masters perfectly - wish I'd have thought about that at the time!!!!
@@GrumpyTim my mother used to be a science teacher,on her PC she had one of those handheld scanners to get diagrams and drawings out of books. printing cost for those blue spirit copies was just a fraction of regular photocopies, factor was something like 1:10, but perhaps the school had a bad copy rental contract.
Absolutely right rarbi.art, particularly when photocopiers were first introduced to schools, they often had a rental charge plus a click charge per copy (possibly some still do) and it made them far more expensive than the spirit duplicators and stencil duplicators. The first photocopier I had was an old Xerox machine - it was massive, unreliable and occasionally singed the paper when it got jammed, but it would have been a cool thing if I still had it - we stripped it apart and kept a few bits as useful components for other projects, the rest got scrapped.
Guuuhhh, I hated "Dittos" (that's what they called them at my school) the smell made me sick, it was worse when the teacher forgot to run off the quizzes and would rush off and come back with a wet stack, really healthy for kids to be breathing the fumes.
Hi nigozeroich, I think you're the first person I've come across who didn't like the smell - and that probably makes you the most sensible and healthy of the lot of us, after all, breathing in VOCs (volatile organic compounds) isn't exactly recommended these days. Cheers for watching, hope being reminded of the smell doesn't bring back too many bad memories.
@GrumpyTim unfortunately I don't have any good or fond memories of my school life, being the only ginger in the entire school was a living hell, even some of the faculty bullied me, but I digress it's still interesting seeing how spirit duplicator (Ditto) works.
I share your pain from school - I didn't fit in with the crowd and therefore I was an easy target, and that continued into my working life. Maybe that's why I became more interested in the things (like the ditto machine) rather than the people.
Great video! My parents talked about the spirit duplicator from their days at school, but I'd never seen one until I watched your video. I wonder, was it possible to make multiple masters in one go? Because, if more than say 50 copies were needed, then the master would run out?
Hi Edward, yeah, that would seem possible to make multiple masters at the same time - probably not more than 2 or 3, and you'd have to press quite hard to make sure your drawing or whatever transferred through to the bottom copy. The old carbon paper used on typewriters was thinner than the waxy ink sheets for the spirit duplicators, and people used to stack as many as 5 carbon copies when typing some business letters and the like - usually they used thinner plain paper for all but the top copy to assist in getting the image to transfer all the way through the stack.....and you had to type fairly firmly too!
They rarely made that many copies it was purely for one class. Most classes NEVER exceeded 40. I can remember classes where you were given one sheet between two and had to share.
So I guess the disadvantage this machine has compared to photocopiers today is that you always had to create your own master from scratch - you couldn't copy something previously made?
Hi osantiagues, there were other ways to create masters - some people used old dot matrix printers to create masters from early computers and so on, but essentially it was the ease of use that made the photocopier the preferred choice. Photocopiers were considerably more expensive to run in the early days, so there was quite an overlap when schools etc were still using the spirit duplicators even though they now had a photocopier as well.
Ah that is true. I guess we forget that these days now that photocopiers are everywhere! Also I guess that masters were routinely done more by hand back then unlike today where computers are the norm. That's interesting as I never considered it from that point of view! Great video, I would love to see more from you on copying methods!
It was possible to make spirit masters using a thermo copier, such as the 3M Thermofax but there were some limitations to this method. The masters were limited to a shorter run length than hand drawn ones, the original had to be a single sheet as it followed a curved path around a belt through the machine and the image had the be black and contain carbon or metal to be ‘seen’ by the thermal copier process. I used to work in a school where we had to keep one of these in working order for just one member of staff who still used it.
Neat! I wanted a more detailed explanation of the mechanics of these devices since watching a 1950s instructional film on their use. Simple yet ingenious, as I suspected! Also do they use “one-way-valve” and “no-return-valve” interchangeably over there? I always thought British people always called them the latter.
Hi Kyle, yes, they're a beautiful exercise in simplicity, nothing over engineered and no silly clips or tamper proof screws to prevent you from getting inside. I think people use both terms over here, and for my part, I probably swap between the two at random and completely unintentionally!!!
I always wanted to use one of these... I used to steal the teachers masters.. they were called IMAGE MASTER, looking back I'm pretty sure they knew I was taking them and they probably wondered 'why does this kid steal these' it was like 3rd or 4th grade when I found out they came in different colors.. seems sorta dumb now..
Hi Mas, that's one of the things I like about these machines - virtually everyone who was at school at that time will either remember the smell or the faded purple prints (other colours available!!!), and will probably have a story to tell relating to those prints, or in your case, you used to take the teachers masters, which is quite funny!!! Thanks for watching and a great story too.
@@GrumpyTim this is why typewriters were a regulated item and you could not own them privately. but anything alcohol based could not be allowed at all.
Hi markylon, and sillysad3198, that all makes sense now you mention it - just hadn't occurred to me that people would attempt to drunk the stuff - I knew that people used to drink Methylated Spirits but I didn't make the leap to Hecto fluid (Banda fluid or whatever you want to call it). It would be reasonable to assume that it wouldn't entirely be good for you!!!
Omg I loved these in the early '70s - the smell was amazing!
Yep, it's a smell that'll always take you back to school (or potentially the office/club/church or whatever!!!).
Gestetner Duplicators were used for a similar purpose but used an ink based system. Their slogan was " keep alcohol out of the office."
Hi Jeffery, I had a Gestetner that I used at the same time as the Spirit Duplicator to produce slightly longer runs of leaflets (at least it was a Gestetner type of machine), I had planned to do a video showing that machine as well, but I must have got rid of it at some time - still got a pack of the stencils for it but no machine.
I think the term (at least for a non-namebrand type thing) is “Mimeograph”. There are some great videos, even some goofy old training video, on them on RUclips!
I remember these from the 70's when I was at school. Always wondered how they worked and why they smelled. Nice one!
Cheers Matt - I guess these things are black and white (or purple and white), you either go "wow, I remember those purple prints and that smell" OR you go "what on earth is he talking about?", - there's probably a mid 1980's cut off point, if you were at school after that time it'll just be alien technology. I love old processes like this, much more interesting than just printing it on an inkjet or laser printer.
It was always a special treat if you were chosen to help the teacher set up or use the Banda machine in the staff room (which they weren't really supposed to do). Partly because you got to see the staff room, partly because you were high as a kite for the rest of the lesson.
That would have been a cool job - I don't think I ever went into the staff room, but I do remember seeing inside through the open door one day - it was a smoky haze due to the fact that it was fairly normal for people to be smoking in there back in those days!!!!
The Banda machines were a really great bit of old tech, pretty much anyone who was at school in those days will remember the prints.... and the aroma.
Cheers for watching.
If you can get high just by smelling alcohol, I bet a bottle of spirits lasts you a long time!
What a fantastic demonstration of a piece of history- thank you!
Cheers carriageofnoreturn, it's such a cool thing, and a smell that so many people will remember.
I sure remember these, could barely read them but they smelt great, happy days.
I found some old school books a few weeks ago, and there inside one of them was an old spirit duplicated sheet of teacher's notes - the smell had long gone but all of the feintness was still there!!!
Ah, that certainly does bring back memories, usually of examinations etc, I've always wondered how those faint purple copies were made on these machines, and yes! the smell of methanol that lingered for ages.
Yep, exams & tests, music lessons trying to squeeze notes out of a cornet (like a trumpet but smaller), homework and so on........ Cheers for watching.
That ending sniff. I loved smelling the copies as they handed it to me. Also I would love it when the teacher would send me to the little shed where an employee would make the copies.
Hi doncocor, I did have one person leave a comment who didn't like the smell of the old spirit duplicator copies, but from what I remember, most people I was at school with used to sniff the sheets as soon as they received them - I guess it was easier to keep kids amused before the invention of the iPhone.
Hahaha yeah! I was just thinking ... That employee in the little shed that made the copies must have been flying high 8 hours a day. Hahaha. @@GrumpyTim
Thanks for your video, we still had these in school in the late 80's, think I still have some copies in my old school bag up in the loft!
Hi Reverend O'darn, they're something you can never forget - I bet there must be loads of faded old prints in dusty lofts all over the place, containing a wealth of long forgotten information and memories.
Im a bit to young to remember these in school however I have seen them around before and always wondered what they where, thanks for sharing!
Haha, you missed out on all those school room solvent sniffing antics!!!
Wow, this brings back memories of those orange beasts seen lurking in the school staff room, along with the faded purple prints and unmistakable smell of solvent. Thanks!
Hi ChayD, yes, they were a very memorable bit of school days for lots of people, myself included. Somehow old gear like this is more exciting than it's modern equivalent.
The visuals in this are very much like the wonderful Look Around You series, especially the last gag, love it!
Cheers Neb, that little gag at the end just had to be done!!! Thanks for watching.
You sure have the most interesting machines! I'd never heard or seen this one. Very interesting.
Hi ohjajohh, I love old tech like this. At one time just about every school in the country would have had one of these machines and no one would have given it a second glance but then you skip forwards about 40 years and suddenly it's an interesting thing that people will either say "wow, I remember those" or "wow, I never knew those existed".
I remember Banda machines so well, when I started work the copy typists would prepare these, corrections were made with pink
correcting fluid. The machines were so large they had a room dedicated for these machines --- the Banda Room. Strange to think how
far we have come in such a short time.
Yeah Robert, progress has fairly zoomed. I still like to hold a printed copy in my hands rather than looking at something on screen, but the speed that you can create your document and get it to it's recipient these days is pretty hard to beat. There's something quite special when you have a whole room dedicated to duplicating machines!!!!
3:26 I made a multi-color ditto of my self designed map of the Rutgers University Bus System back in 1975 or 76!
Hi JeffFrmJoisey, yeah, they were a pretty neat machine being able to print multicolour prints in a single pass, I hope you managed to keep a copy of your map, that would be a nice little keepsake.
during school i spent hours at those machines, loving those smells...
They were quite a thing - can you imagine someone trying to use one in a school these days "I'm just going to let the pupils use this machine full of volatile, highly flammable liquid and breathe in the fumes for a couple of hours!!!"
Well done! Thanks for the video.
Cheers Carl, much appreciated.
Very cool.... I remember the smell on my elementary school days. The paper they used to copy on was of brownish color probably due to a higher content of wood.
Yeah, old paper tended to be less white than modern paper, some more so than others - your school may have been using a fairly affordable paper that didn't see much bleach in it's manufacturing. I used to work in the printing industry, and if I remember correctly, some of the brighter white papers had additional chemicals that would absorb some UV and turn it into visible light to make the paper look brighter - I'm not sure when they started doing that, but certainly during the time I was working in print, the war for who had the whitest paper was quite fierce.
Congrats on hitting the 1K mark, I link any of your relevant videos on the various forums I use so hopefully a few folks will hit subscribe after watching the video. Looking forward to the milestone video.
Cheers, 1000 seems like a miracle, can't believe I got there. Thanks for sharing some of my videos, I never knew that there were people helping me out behind the scenes. I was thinking of not doing a milestone video, it seems to both be a bit smug and also tempt fate for a load of people to unsubscribe!
It's close on 60 years since I seen one but can still smell it and feel the wet paper!
It's a smell/experience that you can never forget - a bit like the smell of freshly ground coffee (not the actual smell, but the sensation it brings when you smell it) - takes me back to my childhood every time!!!
3:43 Anyone know more about this (is it written on an SDS, or i guess MSDS back then!), or do we need to send a sample off for mass spectrometry!
Hi Eric, it could of course be a boring as plain water for the last bit of the mix. Did they even have MSDS sheets when these things were in regular use - I started working in the printing industry about the time the spirit duplicators were being replaced by photocopiers and it was many years before I saw my first safety data sheet - it used to be "here son, use this chemical, it's perfectly safe" and then some years later "don't use that chemical, it causes (enter a serious health issue here)"!!! Happy days.....
Ha ha I remember these type of sheets when I was at school. They certainly had a distinct smell although most of the alcohol had long gone by the time the sheets got to us pupils. Not as bad as the die line machines I used in my first job which used ammonia, light sensitive paper and uv light which shone out of the machine like a beacon! Oh and an industrial sized extract fan to remove at least some of the noxious fumes! But it was the only way to copy big A0 sized plans back in the day.
I remember handling some of those die line prints, and the lingering smell of ammonia - I've never seen them being made, but my first job was in the printing industry and I spent many happy hours in a darkroom with a strong UV light and lots of chemicals, so I kind of get the idea. Stuff was fun then, although the introduction of large inkjet printers was pretty impressive at the time, but I miss the drama of the old methods.
@@GrumpyTim yes die line machines where huge beasts. As a planning officer I used to spend some of my time each week copying plans on it. You got into a rhythm doing it as each print needed to be done manually. The steps were as follows: take the yellow light sensitive paper out of its light proof container. Place the plan face up on top of it. Feed the two sandwiched together into the machine where strong uv light is shone through the plan through onto the light sensitive paper. The sandwich of paper would come out of the machine you would then separate the two putting the plan to one side. The uv light faded the yellow away where is wasn't covered by a dark line on the original plan. Feeding the copy into another slot on the machine exposed it to the ammonia which developed the print by Turing the remaining yellow to black. Hey presto a copy was made. Repeat for another print. Those were the days!
Awesome, I love old processes like that - I used to find dark room work very therapeutic.
So that is why I seen a flexible duct coming out from the top on some of these huge printers/copiers and hung out of a window/terminated to a vent in the wall ~ because it used ammonia as a transfer/generates excess heat 😉
I remember those dye line machines from a temp job I got just after leaving college in the early '90s, many hours were spent inhaling ammonia fumes and shuffling massive sheets of paper 😅
I remember spirit duplicators. In my first job after college involved test reports. Handwritten notes were copy-typed by the office typist and eventually duplicated. I never knew how it worked, until now.
Thanks Peter, it's always good to find other people who remember this stuff. I really love old technology like this, really simple, not much to go wrong, and easy to repair when something does go wrong. Thanks for watching.
Perfect for Halloween 🎃
Yes they had the Banda machines when I was in school in the 80s. The Scouts even used them to make 'hand outs' meaning information sheets
Hi BF Blethering, these machines would have been just about everywhere at one time, and virtually every school child would have received notes produced using this system. I guess the phasing out was pretty rapid, and as most of these machines would have been used in a working environment, not that many of them made their way into peoples lofts, ready to resurface 30 or so years later.
"The Scouts even used them to make 'hand outs'" - My Scoutmaster (circa 1969) discovered an older process, no machine. "Hectograph". Prepare a cookie sheet with a uniform layer of plain gelatin (dash of clove to retard mold). Same purple master as Ditto. Carefully lay the master on the gelatin, let soak, peel off. Now lay blank paper on the inked gelatin. You can pull several dozen copies before the ink fades. Tedious AF.
Coo, that's a cool method, slow, but no machine required does have a certain attraction.
I was going to say well done for getting to 999 subscribers... But I had a word... and now you are at 1K! Well done!
Cheers Ben, that's awesome - I was expecting it to hover at 999 for weeks and then probably fall again!!! Exciting Times :)
@@GrumpyTim how many hours have you got?
My hours have been good for ages, over 5000...
@@GrumpyTim Good work. You can now get monetized. Will not earn you loads but it adds up over time. I now have enough to buy a decent TIG if I wanted or perhaps a cheaper one and a lathe bed regrind for the Atlas.
Yeah, I've started the process already, but it sounds like it'll take a few weeks before it's fully up and running.
The Banda name came from the name of the company that made them, Block and Anderson, but it came to be used as a generic name, like Hoover or Biro.
Hi Stephen, I hadn't realised that the Banda name came from Block and Anderson, but that makes sense. I also hadn't realised that Block and Anderson actually made anything, I've often seen stuff like calculators and other office machinery with one of their stickers on the back (as the dealer who supplied whatever piece of equipment it was), so I figured they were just a supplier.
We used these in the office when I started work. If copies were need then up to 8 would be by carbon paper, above this it was the 'Banda' machine and photocopies were a two stage process of negative and developing and very expensive.
Hi Chris, I'd totally forgotten about using multiple carbon papers to create extra copies - I used to use carbon paper (and still do occasionally) to take a single copy of something I've typed, but of course, people used to use a stack of paper, carbon, paper, carbon etc and the copies got more feint as you went down the stack. I used to have a 3M 2stage photocopier but I think I gave it away ages ago because I couldn't find it when I went looking a couple of years ago. Pity, that would have made an interesting video.
Thanks for watching and reminding me about multiple carbon copies.
We were still using Banda machines in classrooms here in NZ up until the early 90s.
I always wondered if the term "bandied about" (for gossip), is a nod to the function of the Banda copier.
Hi Tom, it does make sense that some places carried on using the Banda machines for quite a while as they were vastly cheaper to use than most early photocopiers, and why invest in new equipment if you don't need to.
I did a quick search about Bandied about, and from what I can find, the word "bandy" originated in the 16th century, meaning to pass a ball to and fro, and from that came the term bandied about, as in passing gossip from person to person. I never thought I'd be researching a 16th century word when I woke up this morning!!!!!
Cheers for watching
@@GrumpyTim Ha! I had a hunch "bandy/bandied" well pre-dated the Banda machine! A bit like the word "crap" predating Thomas Crapper by several centuries!
Clever marketing on Banda's part maybe. Thanks for your research! 👍😉
That looks like some potent stuff in that orange beast😂
Great video and Congrats on breaking 1k subs! Well deserved mate🖖
It's almost comical that it was the norm to hand out alcohol soaked paper to a classroom of school kids - of course they were going to inhale it!!! Probably not nearly as dangerous as it sounds but the fire officer would definitely have something to say about 5 litres of virtually neat alcohol, stored in a plastic bottle, sitting in the corner of the staff room, where in the 60s and 70s many of the staff would have been smoking away happily!!!
Can't believe I finally made it to 1000 - it's been a bit of a struggle. You're zooming along with both your subscriber numbers and regular viewing numbers on your videos, I reckon you'll overtake me within a couple of months.
@@GrumpyTim Yeah, health and safety would have a field day with those things lol
It was fairly slow at the beginning of the year, but it seems like I'm finally gaining some momentum on the channel. Next step, world domination! 😂
Definitely world domination....and I'll be able to say "he used to talk to me before he was famous!!!" Exciting times.....
@@GrumpyTim Haha, don't worry, when I'm RUclips rich and my knees eventually give out from excessive electric skateboard falls and I need bionic legs, I'll commission you you build some for me using mechanical calculator parts and radioactive lenses!😂
@@DavidFlowerOfficial Haha, now that sounds like my sort of project!!!!
The smell I couldn't smell reminded me of when I used to go with my father to get ammonia blueprints.
I'd forgotten about the old blueprints - I didn't have much dealing with them, but I did handle some at one time and yes, that's another old process that had a smell that will bring back memories.
Martin
These were super machines,I have used several types of spirit duplicator over the years and found the Foridigraph ones the best and I don't think there is a modern machine that will print 7 different colours with a single pass at the speed of the spirit process.
That's a very good point Martin, not to mention the running costs of either colour laser printers or inkjet printers. It's a largely forgotten technology nowadays, but virtually anyone who was at school in the 70s and before will have been given notes produced using a spirit duplicator at some point in time.
@@GrumpyTim The process may come back things often go full circle.
Yes, possibly some iteration of the process could come back, I suspect it would need to use something less volatile than Methanol as the solvent second time round!!! I can imagine plenty of organisations and individuals that could make use of the same or a similar process these days.
Yesterday i bought an Spirit Duplicater, but a much older one. I want to restore it and wanna use it. Please can you tell me what kind of master sheets you choose? Which one work best?
There are matrix paper on the market for tatoos or blueprints with graphite. The alcohol i also dont have. But thankfully you show the ingredience.
Great Video!
Hi Atheist1970, The master sheets I've got were ones I bought with the duplicator, so they were ones sold for the purpose. I guess you could just buy the cheapest ones you could find, or maybe talk to your friendly local tattooist and ask to try a single sheet before buying a whole pack. I would think that the mix for the fluid could be anywhere there or thereabouts, after all it's not really doing anything all that technical, just softening the waxy ink enough so some transfers to the paper. Hope you have lots of fun restoring and then using your cool bit of history.
Great video
Thanks Andres, glad you liked it.
And there I was thinking those were produced by Gestetners.... That does beg the question, how does a Gestetner work. Cheers.
I think Gestetner probably made other stuff too, but the stencil duplicators were often referred to as Gestetners regardless of who made them (a bit like Hoover or Sellotape). I had a Rex Rotary stencil duplicator but it appears to have been disposed of - I looked for it a couple of years ago and couldn't find it.
The stencil duplicator system has a pair of drums with something not unlike a silk screen running between them. One of the drums has a sludgy ink pumped through it, which is distributed into the mesh of the silk screen (the ink only dries by absorption so it can get everywhere if you're not careful). Then you have a master which is some kind of loose fibre paper with a wax coating - when you type on the stencil using that stencil setting on your typewriter, the wax is pushed aside, leaving just the paper fibres, which the ink can pass through (there were other ways of making stencils, including big electric scanning/stencil cutting machines - you could also use a scriber to scratch in your design). The stencil was then wrapped round the outside of the silk screen and the printing could commence - the ink would squeeze through the fibres of the stencil and be pressed onto each sheet of paper as it passed through. All of the stencil duplicators I saw were electric powered, although most could be wound by hand as well. I still have a pack of the stencils but the machine itself seems to have gone - pity, I'd have liked to do a video on that one too.
@@GrumpyTim Cheers. Would have been an interesting comparison.
These were a mystery to me, we just saw the alcoholic-fishy smelling results. I think I did see a multicoloured one at least once.
Hi James, they're a quirky bit of history - many people will remember the smell, but unless they worked in an office, school or whatever, will never have seen the machine that made the prints.
Cheers for watching and commenting.
with my Amstrad dot matrix printer (the rebadged c.itoh one) i created the masters without problems.
Coo I'd never thought about that, but yes, an old dot matrix printer would create those masters perfectly - wish I'd have thought about that at the time!!!!
@@GrumpyTim my mother used to be a science teacher,on her PC she had one of those handheld scanners to get diagrams and drawings out of books. printing cost for those blue spirit copies was just a fraction of regular photocopies, factor was something like 1:10, but perhaps the school had a bad copy rental contract.
Absolutely right rarbi.art, particularly when photocopiers were first introduced to schools, they often had a rental charge plus a click charge per copy (possibly some still do) and it made them far more expensive than the spirit duplicators and stencil duplicators. The first photocopier I had was an old Xerox machine - it was massive, unreliable and occasionally singed the paper when it got jammed, but it would have been a cool thing if I still had it - we stripped it apart and kept a few bits as useful components for other projects, the rest got scrapped.
Guuuhhh, I hated "Dittos" (that's what they called them at my school) the smell made me sick, it was worse when the teacher forgot to run off the quizzes and would rush off and come back with a wet stack, really healthy for kids to be breathing the fumes.
Hi nigozeroich, I think you're the first person I've come across who didn't like the smell - and that probably makes you the most sensible and healthy of the lot of us, after all, breathing in VOCs (volatile organic compounds) isn't exactly recommended these days. Cheers for watching, hope being reminded of the smell doesn't bring back too many bad memories.
@GrumpyTim unfortunately I don't have any good or fond memories of my school life, being the only ginger in the entire school was a living hell, even some of the faculty bullied me, but I digress it's still interesting seeing how spirit duplicator (Ditto) works.
I share your pain from school - I didn't fit in with the crowd and therefore I was an easy target, and that continued into my working life. Maybe that's why I became more interested in the things (like the ditto machine) rather than the people.
Great video! My parents talked about the spirit duplicator from their days at school, but I'd never seen one until I watched your video.
I wonder, was it possible to make multiple masters in one go? Because, if more than say 50 copies were needed, then the master would run out?
Hi Edward, yeah, that would seem possible to make multiple masters at the same time - probably not more than 2 or 3, and you'd have to press quite hard to make sure your drawing or whatever transferred through to the bottom copy.
The old carbon paper used on typewriters was thinner than the waxy ink sheets for the spirit duplicators, and people used to stack as many as 5 carbon copies when typing some business letters and the like - usually they used thinner plain paper for all but the top copy to assist in getting the image to transfer all the way through the stack.....and you had to type fairly firmly too!
They rarely made that many copies it was purely for one class. Most classes NEVER exceeded 40. I can remember classes where you were given one sheet between two and had to share.
So I guess the disadvantage this machine has compared to photocopiers today is that you always had to create your own master from scratch - you couldn't copy something previously made?
Hi osantiagues, there were other ways to create masters - some people used old dot matrix printers to create masters from early computers and so on, but essentially it was the ease of use that made the photocopier the preferred choice. Photocopiers were considerably more expensive to run in the early days, so there was quite an overlap when schools etc were still using the spirit duplicators even though they now had a photocopier as well.
Ah that is true. I guess we forget that these days now that photocopiers are everywhere! Also I guess that masters were routinely done more by hand back then unlike today where computers are the norm. That's interesting as I never considered it from that point of view!
Great video, I would love to see more from you on copying methods!
It was possible to make spirit masters using a thermo copier, such as the 3M Thermofax but there were some limitations to this method. The masters were limited to a shorter run length than hand drawn ones, the original had to be a single sheet as it followed a curved path around a belt through the machine and the image had the be black and contain carbon or metal to be ‘seen’ by the thermal copier process.
I used to work in a school where we had to keep one of these in working order for just one member of staff who still used it.
Neat! I wanted a more detailed explanation of the mechanics of these devices since watching a 1950s instructional film on their use. Simple yet ingenious, as I suspected!
Also do they use “one-way-valve” and “no-return-valve” interchangeably over there? I always thought British people always called them the latter.
Hi Kyle, yes, they're a beautiful exercise in simplicity, nothing over engineered and no silly clips or tamper proof screws to prevent you from getting inside.
I think people use both terms over here, and for my part, I probably swap between the two at random and completely unintentionally!!!
I always wanted to use one of these... I used to steal the teachers masters.. they were called IMAGE MASTER, looking back I'm pretty sure they knew I was taking them and they probably wondered 'why does this kid steal these' it was like 3rd or 4th grade when I found out they came in different colors.. seems sorta dumb now..
Hi Mas, that's one of the things I like about these machines - virtually everyone who was at school at that time will either remember the smell or the faded purple prints (other colours available!!!), and will probably have a story to tell relating to those prints, or in your case, you used to take the teachers masters, which is quite funny!!! Thanks for watching and a great story too.
It's so orange!
It's more orange than a really orange thing!!!!
I remember being given faded purple handouts in cramped and illegible hand writing. Bloody useless.
Yeah, I guess it was subject to the ability of the teacher to write neatly - I'd have been useless at that bit, and writing on the blackboard too!!!
i am not surprised this technology never existed in russia
Yeah, it would be very easy to create a little newsletter/leaflet with one of these, and heaven forbid that idea!!!
@@GrumpyTim this is why typewriters were a regulated item and you could not own them privately.
but anything alcohol based could not be allowed at all.
@@GrumpyTim I think they drank the SPIRIT
Hi markylon, and sillysad3198, that all makes sense now you mention it - just hadn't occurred to me that people would attempt to drunk the stuff - I knew that people used to drink Methylated Spirits but I didn't make the leap to Hecto fluid (Banda fluid or whatever you want to call it). It would be reasonable to assume that it wouldn't entirely be good for you!!!
So I was on meth all through school?