I remember that smell from elementary school. When the teacher handed out a test, the whole room smelled of it. Like the smell of play-doh, you never forget.
Starting as a kindergartner in 1970 I loved the smell of dittos. The feel of wet paper, the purple color and that glorious smell. Those were good days.
This is literally the story of my elementary school days in the mid-to-late 1970s. I always used to hold my worksheets up to my nose, to smell the fresh smell of the duplicating fluid after the teacher or assistant teacher ran off the sheets and handed them to us. The sheets would still be slightly damp. By my high school days, the toner-based copy machines were being used. By my college days, the first laser printers were in use.
@@susanbender2953 I cant remember the smell either but in the early to mid 70's it was fun when the teacher asked you to crank out 30 copy's....it was more fun when you were chosen to go outside to clap the erasers!! A lot of us would clap them on the side of the school and their would be white rectangles all over the place !!
@Michael Sheldon Reed - You must be a "youngster"! They still had the Mimeograph machines when I was in high school! (Graduated in 1972) Guess I'm an oldster. It smelled soo good! Have a great week!
@@williamd2738 Yeah! Pretty smart of the teachers to make the kids clean the erasers. They would inhale all that chalk and not know the damage they were doing to their lungs.
no wonder my teachers always seemed happy after printing us out assignments, they were buzzing from leaning over that machine.... " we needed 20 copies, she printed out 300" lol
Those machines saved my life! I went to rough high school and wanted out. They finally let me work two hours a day in main offices last two years of school as they knew I wasn't a bad kid. Kept me from dropping out and I went on to college.
Good for you! Luckily many kids are able to escape the tyranny of the 'rough' kids ruining the schools and propel themselves out of the trench they will alway live in.
When I was in 5th grade, my teacher would send me out frequently to make dittos. Looking back on it now, I think it’s because I talked too much and disrupted class. 😂 Tue following year in 6th grade, we were using Xerox machines, and only the teachers and office staff were allowed to touch them. 😢
Ahh, Mimeograph Memories! The color, the smell. I remember using one at church well into the 80s even. I remember far fewer problems than with present day copy machines too.
Lol. As soon as I read "The Smell", I could instantly smell that. I hadn't even thought about that since the last time I smelled it, but it came right back! Probably 45 years ago.
During my senior year of high school I was a teacher's aide and I had to go down to the office and use the ditto machine at least every other week. That fragrance is emblazoned across my olfactory system.
my teachers used this in the 80s in my low-budget school :) The aroma of coffee wafting from the teacher's lounge, and the peppermint Elmer's paste glue....wonderful happy memories
My third grade teacher's classroom was close to the office, so my classmates and I would receive the copies nice and wet. When we were in fifth and sixth grade, we would want everyone to hurry up and get back to class after recess so that the paper would not become too dry. Ditto machines were still being used when I started teaching back in 1992, and the ink stains were a badge of honor.
The sheets used in mimeograph or ditto machines were also known as "Spirit Masters". Typing on one involved the use of "dummy tape", that you used on the ink side of the master, to correct typing errors. I remember school assignment and test papers, as well as the elementary school newspaper, being printed on these. Another movie reference to mimeograph machines was in "Animal House", where a member of the Omegas puts a spirit master, with all the wrong test answers, in the trash, and Bluto (John Belushi) finds it. The Deltas take the test, they all fail, and get put on "Double Secret Probation" by Dean Wormer.
Cold off the press! They had a cold damp feel when they were recently printed and that wonderful aroma! Good times! Thanks for the memories Recollection Road!
Besides the unforgettable smell the sheets had, the copies were also really cold if they were back brought back into the classroom quick enough. We rubbed them on out face to feel the refreshment in the warm days.
Elementary school for me in the 1970's was the ditto machines, the American flag in every classroom and the front office switchboard was an actual switch board with the cords and plugs. If someone called the school and needed to speak to a teacher or principal, the secretary would plug it into that phone extension. When the call was completed, she would unplug it. The teacher's lounge was a smoke filled room and we never got to see what the teachers had for lunch. Oh and we also had a Registered nurse at the school in case you got hurt or sick.
Speaking of getting "high" to school supplies, I seem to recall a clearish, thick liquid glue that game in a brown glass jar. The lid had an applicator brush attached to it.
Some of our classrooms had one of these machines at the back of the room. Loved the smell. Take me back. I was in grade school in the late 50's thru the 60's.
This is Ralph Balfoort responding on my wife's Chromebook. I used both machines. I used the alcohol-based Ditto machine in the Army for a stage production we did in SEA; it had the advantage that I could run the pages through multiple times, each one using a different color. Later on, I became the editor of the newsletter for an historical association; the mimeograph was faster, and I could use photographs on stencils cut by a specialty outfit, but it was single color - black.
Let it be hereby known the Internet appreciates Ralph's clarification that this comment is in fact from him, not his wife, despite him making the comment while logged in on Darlene's Chromebook.
My first office job in the late 70's had a mimeograph machine. I loved using it. As a kid in school I still remember the excitement of freshly mimeographed papers and I'll never forget the smell.
When I was a kid, Dittos were for everyday classroom work and tests. Gestetner mimeographs were for very important documents: letters from the Office, and final exams. Purple was the most common colour, with green or burgundy for special occasions. A clever/overachieving person could use all 3 on a single sheet. The inks were anilyne dyes, which are still used today by tattoo artists (to transfer artwork onto clients) and in Voter Ink (to stain people's thumbs purple, to prevent them from casting multiple ballots). The forerunner of the Ditto machine was the Hektograph, which used a gelatine-filled tray as the transfer medium for the anilyne ink stencil.
I was able to smell it again a few years back. My brother bought a print shop and a couple of these were in the back with all the supplies and we played with them to get them working again just for the fun of it. The smell hits you like a hammer from the past with images of grade school running through your head.
I have _very_ fond memories of those memiographed handouts, all through grade school. And that was in the 80’s. I vividly remember that smell and the smudgy purple ink... what I wouldn’t give to relive that school experience for just one day.
I was a Chicago Public School teacher back in the 1970's The kids and the parents like them because the kids did not have to copy the work off the black bored. You are so right every one knew that smell. It was a good time to be a teacher!
I do remember the ditto machines from elementary and middle school. By high school all the teachers used photo copies, except if the copier broke down, then it was back to good old dittos. It’s funny in college, dittos were a thing of the past, except my junior year I had one math professor who refused to use anything but dittos It was like a blast from the past.
I remember something even more primitive, the Gestetner machine, for which you had to cut a stencil on a special typewriter and make copies from that. I used to make mistakes in the stencil and had to paint over the error with a sort of glue (horrible-smelling pink stuff like nail polish), and then type over the error. The thing was hand-cranked and made copies about as fast as a Gutenberg press. This was used as recently as the mid-1980s in an office I worked in (a credit union).
I started Kindergarten in 68, but I don't remember till 4th grade. We moved to Franklin, NC and it was a very poor area. The school was small and they used a hand-cranked model. The high school had a motor driven model. Yes, the smell sticks in my mind. And it was fun to get to make copies.
In the mid 70’s in Austin, TX I went to Summit elementary school, we had a hand cranked mimeograph in the office and I would get to run off worksheets for my teacher, it was so much fun and I’ll never forget that wonderful smell!! Thanks for the awesome video I haven’t thought about this in so many years and it was really fun remembering those good times!! 😊
And the Tempera paints in the squeeze bottles in art class. The big bottles were all the same color but they they all had dry paint that had dripped down the sides and that's how you knew the paint color inside!
Oh yes, all through elementary, middle, and most of high school, the sting of test day was eased by that intoxicating ditto machine copy smell on our papers. Great memories!
RR my friend you are taking me back to my youth. My father was big into the RC model airplanes and he had mimeograph and used it to print out the meeting minutes for the club and yes I remember the smell lol
There was a home version called the gelatin duplicator. It was a metal tray filled with a special gelatinous substance. You used the same masters and simply wiped over the surface then applied your completed master. One sheet at a time printing could be painfully slow, but I got to make all the copies Mom needed for PTA or Girl Scouts. Yeah that smell was just as heavenly.
I learned to use the machine in elementary in the 60's and it came in handy when I worked in a small 12 bed hospital in the 90's because using the copying machine for routine forms was very expensive and yes I loved that smell................
How fondly I remember the scent of just-printed school work papers from the "ditto machine". I'm sure there's no latent side effects all these years later. 🥴
Oh, the thought of that smell takes me back to school. Just think of what we thought was a long time in school preparing for adulthood. It was hardly any time at all.
Funny, I started elementary school in the early 60's and have no recollection of being impressed with the smell but then again it may have been part of the background ambiance I just took for granted.
Still used them at my primary (elementary) school in Australia in the late 1980s using a 1970s Fordigraph machine. Modern photocopies had taken over by the time high school arrived in the early 90s.
I was a student aid for a Math class in my High School Senior year 1979 and on occasion the teacher would send me to make "ditto copies". I don't remember so much the smell while running them off, but I do remember breathing them in, all the way back to the classroom, the smell was intoxicating! The closest thing I've run onto that smells like a ditto, is the smell after squishing a squash beetle. Ironically, chickens will not eat or get too close to them (to squash beetles)... and chickens have no sense of smell supposedly, lol!
I recall mimeograph from school but can’t recall ever sniffing one. Where I worked, the front office had an old copy machine that took two stages. First, you had to put your original with a piece of pink film over it pink down over the light source. Expose it to the light. Then put the film on the specialty blank paper and run it through the developer rollers. You needed a new pink sheet for each copy. Things got whole much easier and faster when the next one used a toner cartridge and could print multiple copies.
Wonderful episode! Yes I remember that incredible odor that emanated from a freshly mimeographed sheet. One of those sheets instructed me that odor is a noun and smell is a verb. Likewise taste is a verb and flavor is a noun. Hint hint.
My mom was an elementary teacher so I had lots of opportunities to smell it even at home. We also had a hectograph, which was a totally manual process that used a pan of gelatin as the transfer medium; generally for home use because of the low number of copies that could be made and the length of time to make them.
I was in elementary school in the 70s and these were used heavily in the schools. Something really intoxicating about the aroma😜 I still have some of my elementary school papers stashed away in the garage... Think I'm going to have to do the sniff test for old times sake😁 I graduated high school in 1988 and spent one period of my senior year in the media center... I don't recall ever seeing a Ditto or Mimeograph around at that time. Most everything had been modernized to industrial copy machines with a wide range of capabilities. I wonder if there is a market for "Ditto" scented candles...😎
OMG I so remember this from grade school. That smell.. sometimes when the teacher was rushed he'll have just run them and they are still wet when you get them.
@@Indigo00eyez that’s for sure. Glorifying the past is a trait too many people have. Wasn’t easy then either, that’s why there is change because things sucked then too. Think about it longer🧐
OMG 😳!!! Oh how I remember these mimeograph & Ditto machines when I was in high school back in the 70’s and when I became a teacher & librarian back in the 80’s & 90’s!! Then it all changed!! Thank you for posting these wonderful memories!! 🙏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🙋🏻♀️💙
I went through elementary school in the last half of the 1950's. The mimeograph machine was a motorized model that was placed on a table/desk on the stairwell landing between the first and second floor. Can't ever forget the machine or the smell! What a memory!!!
I wonder if I could pick up one of these machines on Ebay? I suppose you cannot find the fluid it used anymore though. It would be cool to have a Ditto Sniffing party!
Jim Urrata The only reason he knew was when he was little I took him to get our silhouettes done at a craft fair. I explained to him as kids we all had our heads done in school & how the teacher did it was by using an overhead projector. 1960's & he was born in '96.
I clearly remembered that smell right through high school in (I graduated in 1979). It was the early 1980's when laser-based xerography machines finally replaced the Mimeograph and Ditto machines.
Thank you! At 70 I miss the good old days when people seemed much happier, life was less complicated, we had only 2 genders, family dinners every Sunday to catch up on our week & the addictive smell of freshly printed ditto sheets on test day!
In kindergarten, back in 1971, I carried a mimeographed paper home in the rain. When I got home, I told my mother, "This paper is covered with purple rain."
I remember the day our teacher dropped the can of fluid. She had to go home and change her dress. The principal took her class and got angry because we kept laughing.
I remember them from school, the slightly damp purple print and the vinegary smell. One of the slower kids cracked up the whole class when he said ‘sir you have such neat handwriting!’ after the teacher distributed mimeographed handouts typed on a cursive typewriter. My first ever job was working in photocopier room for a big enterprise when photocopiers were new and hugely expensive. There were two huge photocopiers in the room behind a counter. People had fill out a form signed by their boss to get photocopying done by me, the new kid straight out of school. I had no idea who anyone was or what signature was what. I just did everything put in the in-tray.
Had these types of hand-outs in a Philadelphia Catholic grade school in the 80's - I went to high school in 1989 and they were still handing them out for our final exams at the end of 8th grade
When making the master page for the mimeo and dittos, you had to be spot-on with no typo errors; otherwise, you had to toss the page away and prepare another master from scratch. The aroma from the dittos was very compelling to sniff for the school-aged kids back in the 1960s. But then, we had a really cool grade-school teacher at one time in the mid-60s, when the subject came up about gas, she denoted the difference of gas being that the natural for home-heating/cooking smelled foul, but gasoline smelled good. Gee! Imagine the kind of trouble the teacher would get nowadays with such talk. xD And I'll add that lead-based gasoline in the 1960s did have a different aroma when compared the non-leaded stuff nowadays.
I laughed so hard when I saw all the students smell the freshly printed test papers in Fast Times at Ridgemount High. We all did this at one time or another as Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers.
I remember that smell as if it were yesterday and that was at least 50 years ago. Thanks for the wonderful memories.
At least! LOL!
THAT and the pine cleaner the custodial staff used.
@@PungiFungi REAL Pine-Sol (Or, for something different: "Murphy's Oil Soap") Smells like "clean"!
@@PungiFungi And the rosin smell of sweeping compound from a cardboard drum.
Red or green, it smelled the same.
I can remember hearing the ditto machine running and everyone smelling their paperwork
I remember that smell from elementary school. When the teacher handed out a test, the whole room smelled of it. Like the smell of play-doh, you never forget.
Exactly
Yup I remember it as well🙂
Yes...me too...I remember it well! I loved it!
Good times. Miss those days.
I have forgotten the smell but not the operation.
Starting as a kindergartner in 1970 I loved the smell of dittos. The feel of wet paper, the purple color and that glorious smell. Those were good days.
Born in '65. Whatever they were, I remember them bluish and damp with a great smell.
Me too, 1965.
Young whippersnappers 🤣🤣🤣
Me too!
👍
Born in 1965 myself and that's exactly how I remember them and I loved that smell!
This is literally the story of my elementary school days in the mid-to-late 1970s. I always used to hold my worksheets up to my nose, to smell the fresh smell of the duplicating fluid after the teacher or assistant teacher ran off the sheets and handed them to us. The sheets would still be slightly damp. By my high school days, the toner-based copy machines were being used. By my college days, the first laser printers were in use.
You're right! Now that I think about it, freshly printed sheets were damp! That was fifty years ago, and we still remember.
Its a funny thing , I can remember wanting to smell it and liking the smell but I can't remember the actual smell.
@@susanbender2953 I cant remember the smell either but in the early to mid 70's it was fun when the teacher asked you to crank out 30 copy's....it was more fun when you were chosen to go outside to clap the erasers!! A lot of us would clap them on the side of the school and their would be white rectangles all over the place !!
@Michael Sheldon Reed - You must be a "youngster"! They still had the Mimeograph machines when I was in high school! (Graduated in 1972) Guess I'm an oldster. It smelled soo good! Have a great week!
@@williamd2738 Yeah! Pretty smart of the teachers to make the kids clean the erasers. They would inhale all that chalk and not know the damage they were doing to their lungs.
no wonder my teachers always seemed happy after printing us out assignments, they were buzzing from leaning over that machine.... " we needed 20 copies, she printed out 300" lol
😂😂😂
👍😜👍
Typical Labral wasting the tax payer's money
@@scottr3484 ?🤔?
okay!!! thats my laugh for the day...300 copies...but damn they smelled good!
I remember elementary school in the 70s it always smelled like mimeograph ink and cigarette smoke
I remember walking past the teacher's lounge- the door would open and a great cloud of smoke would billow into the hallway.
@@falcon664 it was always like that scene from the movie up in smoke with Cheech and Chong 🤣🤣
Yep...😁😁
😂😂😂😂😂😂
The teachers lounge during lunch, looked like a smog filled city in china
I remember these machines. They used them when I was in elementary school. They used them in the school office.
Those machines saved my life! I went to rough high school and wanted out. They finally let me work two hours a day in main offices last two years of school as they knew I wasn't a bad kid. Kept me from dropping out and I went on to college.
Good for you! Luckily many kids are able to escape the tyranny of the 'rough' kids ruining the schools and propel themselves out of the trench they will alway live in.
That’s freakin cool
When I was in 5th grade, my teacher would send me out frequently to make dittos. Looking back on it now, I think it’s because I talked too much and disrupted class. 😂 Tue following year in 6th grade, we were using Xerox machines, and only the teachers and office staff were allowed to touch them. 😢
My elementary school days ( 1970s ) you definitely had to sniff the paper before doing your assignment. 📝
I'm a 70's kid too and sometimes the whole classroom would have that weird smell.
Same here.
@Clinton Nebraska -- Absolutely!! Sniffing the freshly printed out tests was a MUST! Smelled so good!
👍
But you often had to wait on your sheet to completely dry before you could write on it!
Ahh, Mimeograph Memories! The color, the smell. I remember using one at church well into the 80s even. I remember far fewer problems than with present day copy machines too.
Lol. As soon as I read "The Smell", I could instantly smell that. I hadn't even thought about that since the last time I smelled it, but it came right back! Probably 45 years ago.
This was one of the many funny scenes from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Great memories!
During my senior year of high school I was a teacher's aide and I had to go down to the office and use the ditto machine at least every other week. That fragrance is emblazoned across my olfactory system.
my teachers used this in the 80s in my low-budget school :) The aroma of coffee wafting from the teacher's lounge, and the peppermint Elmer's paste glue....wonderful happy memories
My third grade teacher's classroom was close to the office, so my classmates and I would receive the copies nice and wet. When we were in fifth and sixth grade, we would want everyone to hurry up and get back to class after recess so that the paper would not become too dry. Ditto machines were still being used when I started teaching back in 1992, and the ink stains were a badge of honor.
I started elementary school in 1973 - ditto fluid smell lives rent free in my memories 💜💜
The sheets used in mimeograph or ditto machines were also known as "Spirit Masters". Typing on one involved the use of "dummy tape", that you used on the ink side of the master, to correct typing errors. I remember school assignment and test papers, as well as the elementary school newspaper, being printed on these. Another movie reference to mimeograph machines was in "Animal House", where a member of the Omegas puts a spirit master, with all the wrong test answers, in the trash, and Bluto (John Belushi) finds it. The Deltas take the test, they all fail, and get put on "Double Secret Probation" by Dean Wormer.
Cold off the press! They had a cold damp feel when they were recently printed and that wonderful aroma! Good times! Thanks for the memories Recollection Road!
So appreciated... thank you! Yes, I remember!
I remember so much from those days!
I remember the teachers being in that small maintenance room hand cranking those worksheets out.
Your teachers were being crafty. A small, small room to maximize the smell concentration!
The other reason they were in that room was to smoke a cigarette...most teachers smoked in those days
I don't see any black teachers.
👍
Besides the unforgettable smell the sheets had, the copies were also really cold if they were back brought back into the classroom quick enough. We rubbed them on out face to feel the refreshment in the warm days.
It was such a wonderful and uplifting smell! Despite that it was huffing I do miss that smell. Fresh ditto sheets were always the best 😂
My elementary school had a hand crank mimeograph in the 90s for the one teacher who still insisted on using it.
@jblyon2 she must’ve had some career-ending dirt on a boss ;)
👍
These were without a doubt, modern marvels back in the day.
In my mind's nose I can still smell the ink.
Same, I just did that. Cool comment.
Elementary school for me in the 1970's was the ditto machines, the American flag in every classroom and the front office switchboard was an actual switch board with the cords and plugs. If someone called the school and needed to speak to a teacher or principal, the secretary would plug it into that phone extension. When the call was completed, she would unplug it. The teacher's lounge was a smoke filled room and we never got to see what the teachers had for lunch. Oh and we also had a Registered nurse at the school in case you got hurt or sick.
Speaking of getting "high" to school supplies, I seem to recall a clearish, thick liquid glue that game in a brown glass jar. The lid had an applicator brush attached to it.
The copies the made smelled so good!
Some of our classrooms had one of these machines at the back of the room. Loved the smell. Take me back. I was in grade school in the late 50's thru the 60's.
This is Ralph Balfoort responding on my wife's Chromebook. I used both machines. I used the alcohol-based Ditto machine in the Army for a stage production we did in SEA; it had the advantage that I could run the pages through multiple times, each one using a different color. Later on, I became the editor of the newsletter for an historical association; the mimeograph was faster, and I could use photographs on stencils cut by a specialty outfit, but it was single color - black.
Let it be hereby known the Internet appreciates Ralph's clarification that this comment is in fact from him, not his wife, despite him making the comment while logged in on Darlene's Chromebook.
My first office job in the late 70's had a mimeograph machine. I loved using it. As a kid in school I still remember the excitement of freshly mimeographed papers and I'll never forget the smell.
Ditto 👍
@@larryx1707 , good one!!!
@@claudiahansen4938 ....😂 I couldn't resist lol....have a great day☺
Did it get you high?
When I was a kid, Dittos were for everyday classroom work and tests. Gestetner mimeographs were for very important documents: letters from the Office, and final exams.
Purple was the most common colour, with green or burgundy for special occasions. A clever/overachieving person could use all 3 on a single sheet. The inks were anilyne dyes, which are still used today by tattoo artists (to transfer artwork onto clients) and in Voter Ink (to stain people's thumbs purple, to prevent them from casting multiple ballots).
The forerunner of the Ditto machine was the Hektograph, which used a gelatine-filled tray as the transfer medium for the anilyne ink stencil.
What was the difference between Ditto and Gestettner ??
When my father came to Canada in 1956, he got a job at Gestetner in their repair department. His job was to repair/refurbish their ditto machines.
Gestetner was a different process than Ditto. It involved cutting stencils and actual black ink.
The smell was terrible and wonderful at the same time. I would give anything to smell it one more time.
Indeed
I thought it was like regurgitated sugar cookies, but it smelled better than the classroom and some of the classmates you sat next too.....
@Lib Slayer --- YES!! Oh I'd love to smell it again. IN all honesty, I'd love to go back to the 1960s as in NOW. Have a great week!
@@TheMistysFavs completely agree !!
I was able to smell it again a few years back. My brother bought a print shop and a couple of these were in the back with all the supplies and we played with them to get them working again just for the fun of it. The smell hits you like a hammer from the past with images of grade school running through your head.
I have _very_ fond memories of those memiographed handouts, all through grade school. And that was in the 80’s. I vividly remember that smell and the smudgy purple ink... what I wouldn’t give to relive that school experience for just one day.
Ditto, not Mimeo had the smell and the purple ink.
I was a Chicago Public School teacher back in the 1970's The kids and the parents like them because the kids did not have to copy the work off the black bored. You are so right every one knew that smell. It was a good time to be a teacher!
Like everyone else I loved the smell of the fresh copies....they were even damp from the ink. Those were some great times.
I do remember the ditto machines from elementary and middle school. By high school all the teachers used photo copies, except if the copier broke down, then it was back to good old dittos. It’s funny in college, dittos were a thing of the past, except my junior year I had one math professor who refused to use anything but dittos It was like a blast from the past.
I remember something even more primitive, the Gestetner machine, for which you had to cut a stencil on a special typewriter and make copies from that. I used to make mistakes in the stencil and had to paint over the error with a sort of glue (horrible-smelling pink stuff like nail polish), and then type over the error. The thing was hand-cranked and made copies about as fast as a Gutenberg press. This was used as recently as the mid-1980s in an office I worked in (a credit union).
In ninth grade--1958-59-- I took a class in Office Practices. Used the machine a lot.
Remember the smell very well. Even though it has been close to 50 years
Elementary school mid 70s to early 80s...
Loved that smell 💜
Elementary school 1973-80. Remember that smell very well. It would permeate the classroom.
It just had a very unique aroma. I've never come across anything like it since that time.
Ditto and Mimeograph not only facilitated casual printing, they inspired a certain look to pages.
I started Kindergarten in 68, but I don't remember till 4th grade. We moved to Franklin, NC and it was a very poor area. The school was small and they used a hand-cranked model. The high school had a motor driven model.
Yes, the smell sticks in my mind. And it was fun to get to make copies.
In the mid 70’s in Austin, TX I went to Summit elementary school, we had a hand cranked mimeograph in the office and I would get to run off worksheets for my teacher, it was so much fun and I’ll never forget that wonderful smell!! Thanks for the awesome video I haven’t thought about this in so many years and it was really fun remembering those good times!! 😊
Ah, the smell of my childhood, along with the scent of school paste.🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
When I was in kindergarten (1951), the modeling clay had a weird smell to it that I can't describe and can't forget, either.
And the Tempera paints in the squeeze bottles in art class. The big bottles were all the same color but they they all had dry paint that had dripped down the sides and that's how you knew the paint color inside!
👍
I could almost smell this video. The memory of that scent runs deep in my memory.
I'll never forget that wonderful smell! But it also brought the dread of an up coming test, that I usually didn't study for.
Oh yes, all through elementary, middle, and most of high school, the sting of test day was eased by that intoxicating ditto machine copy smell on our papers. Great memories!
I remember those smells. I miss them
RR my friend you are taking me back to my youth. My father was big into the RC model airplanes and he had mimeograph and used it to print out the meeting minutes for the club and yes I remember the smell lol
There was a home version called the gelatin duplicator. It was a metal tray filled with a special gelatinous substance. You used the same masters and simply wiped over the surface then applied your completed master. One sheet at a time printing could be painfully slow, but I got to make all the copies Mom needed for PTA or Girl Scouts. Yeah that smell was just as heavenly.
The best was being teacher’s pet. I got to help with the running off of new homework sheets. The smell was like heaven.
Lmao.. i really dont think he was literally referring to the smell of anything.... i think its some kind of phrase... but i could be wrong
Ummm... Yeah your wrong. Guess your to young!
😐
I learned to use the machine in elementary in the 60's and it came in handy when I worked in a small 12 bed hospital in the 90's because using the copying machine for routine forms was very expensive and yes I loved that smell................
Me too
How fondly I remember the scent of just-printed school work papers from the "ditto machine".
I'm sure there's no latent side effects all these years later. 🥴
Yup, my schools used "Mimeo" machines, throughout the 80s. I can still remember the purple print!
Count the 80s and 90s as decades these were used as well. My school had them the entire time I was there (1979-1992).
Oh, the thought of that smell takes me back to school. Just think of what we thought was a long time in school preparing for adulthood. It was hardly any time at all.
Funny, I started elementary school in the early 60's and have no recollection of being impressed with the smell but then again it may have been part of the background ambiance I just took for granted.
I remember those assignments very, very well! 🤣
OMGosh!!! I loved that smell.
Still used them at my primary (elementary) school in Australia in the late 1980s using a 1970s Fordigraph machine. Modern photocopies had taken over by the time high school arrived in the early 90s.
I was a student aid for a Math class in my High School Senior year 1979 and on occasion the teacher would send me to make "ditto copies". I don't remember so much the smell while running them off, but I do remember breathing them in, all the way back to the classroom, the smell was intoxicating! The closest thing I've run onto that smells like a ditto, is the smell after squishing a squash beetle. Ironically, chickens will not eat or get too close to them (to squash beetles)... and chickens have no sense of smell supposedly, lol!
I recall mimeograph from school but can’t recall ever sniffing one. Where I worked, the front office had an old copy machine that took two stages. First, you had to put your original with a piece of pink film over it pink down over the light source. Expose it to the light. Then put the film on the specialty blank paper and run it through the developer rollers. You needed a new pink sheet for each copy. Things got whole much easier and faster when the next one used a toner cartridge and could print multiple copies.
"The smell of a freshly printed Ditto is one of those smells we never forget." How true! I loved that smell! It never is lost to time.
Wonderful episode! Yes I remember that incredible odor that emanated from a freshly mimeographed sheet. One of those sheets instructed me that odor is a noun and smell is a verb. Likewise taste is a verb and flavor is a noun. Hint hint.
Some of the magic makers back in the 60s & 70s smelled really good, almost give you a buzz!
This channel knows me very well it has hit on all of my fond memories and places I use to go in my youth
I remember the handouts and the scent, but never actually saw any of the machines. Great video!
Oh how I remember the blurry purple ink of the ditto machine, which seemed worse when teachers wrote in cursive instead if typing their handouts!
Those purple hand outs and we even had purple band music. Memories!
My mom was an elementary teacher so I had lots of opportunities to smell it even at home. We also had a hectograph, which was a totally manual process that used a pan of gelatin as the transfer medium; generally for home use because of the low number of copies that could be made and the length of time to make them.
Teacher's kid too, cranked out many a copy before class started for the rest of the kids... I can still taste that smell.
We were huffing and didn’t even know it😂
I was in elementary school in the 70s and these were used heavily in the schools. Something really intoxicating about the aroma😜 I still have some of my elementary school papers stashed away in the garage... Think I'm going to have to do the sniff test for old times sake😁 I graduated high school in 1988 and spent one period of my senior year in the media center... I don't recall ever seeing a Ditto or Mimeograph around at that time. Most everything had been modernized to industrial copy machines with a wide range of capabilities. I wonder if there is a market for "Ditto" scented candles...😎
OMG I so remember this from grade school. That smell.. sometimes when the teacher was rushed he'll have just run them and they are still wet when you get them.
The old days seemed much more fun, worth living. Simple, uncomplicated times.
There were plenty of problems then too.
That's called nostalgia. It isn't based on fact.
The old days were fun.
Toxic too
@@Indigo00eyez that’s for sure. Glorifying the past is a trait too many people have. Wasn’t easy then either, that’s why there is change because things sucked then too. Think about it longer🧐
Great video...brought back so many memories...I started first grade in 1967...Queens N.Y. I wish I could go back ..even for just one day..📠
OMG 😳!!! Oh how I remember these mimeograph & Ditto machines when I was in high school back in the 70’s and when I became a teacher & librarian back in the 80’s & 90’s!! Then it all changed!!
Thank you for posting these wonderful memories!! 🙏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🙋🏻♀️💙
I went through elementary school in the last half of the 1950's. The mimeograph machine was a motorized model that was placed on a table/desk on the stairwell landing between the first and second floor. Can't ever forget the machine or the smell! What a memory!!!
I wonder if I could pick up one of these machines on Ebay? I suppose you cannot find the fluid it used anymore though. It would be cool to have a Ditto Sniffing party!
My elementary school teacher let me do mimeos for her. I really felt special doing her work for her.
I remember in the mid 1960's when the teacher would scan the class room looking for someone to help turn the crank.
My class smelled them from the mid 70s to 80s. We loved that glorious smell!
It's funny my son laughed when I said Overhead Projector once.
Your son knew what an overhead projector was???
Jim Urrata The only reason he knew was when he was little I took him to get our silhouettes done at a craft fair. I explained to him as kids we all had our heads done in school & how the teacher did it was by using an overhead projector. 1960's & he was born in '96.
I remember in middle school when I was allowed to fill the alcohol tank and crank the handle, I felt like GOD!
My father was a teacher and he would bring home ditto masters and I would scribble on them and he would bring home copies. I remember the smell.
I clearly remembered that smell right through high school in (I graduated in 1979). It was the early 1980's when laser-based xerography machines finally replaced the Mimeograph and Ditto machines.
I remember that smell form elementary school right before the modern copy machine and the computers took over when I was in middle and high school.
Thank you! At 70 I miss the good old days when people seemed much happier, life was less complicated, we had only 2 genders, family dinners every Sunday to catch up on our week & the addictive smell of freshly printed ditto sheets on test day!
In kindergarten, back in 1971, I carried a mimeographed paper home in the rain. When I got home, I told my mother, "This paper is covered with purple rain."
You where an inspiration for Prince and you didn’t even know it.
😐
I remember the day our teacher dropped the can of fluid. She had to go home and change her dress. The principal took her class and got angry because we kept laughing.
I remember them from school, the slightly damp purple print and the vinegary smell. One of the slower kids cracked up the whole class when he said ‘sir you have such neat handwriting!’ after the teacher distributed mimeographed handouts typed on a cursive typewriter.
My first ever job was working in photocopier room for a big enterprise when photocopiers were new and hugely expensive. There were two huge photocopiers in the room behind a counter. People had fill out a form signed by their boss to get photocopying done by me, the new kid straight out of school. I had no idea who anyone was or what signature was what. I just did everything put in the in-tray.
Had these types of hand-outs in a Philadelphia Catholic grade school in the 80's - I went to high school in 1989 and they were still handing them out for our final exams at the end of 8th grade
This is magnificent. Thank you
Thanks for the video.
When making the master page for the mimeo and dittos, you had to be spot-on with no typo errors; otherwise, you had to toss the page away and prepare another master from scratch.
The aroma from the dittos was very compelling to sniff for the school-aged kids back in the 1960s.
But then, we had a really cool grade-school teacher at one time in the mid-60s, when the subject came up about gas, she denoted the difference of gas being that the natural for home-heating/cooking smelled foul, but gasoline smelled good. Gee! Imagine the kind of trouble the teacher would get nowadays with such talk. xD
And I'll add that lead-based gasoline in the 1960s did have a different aroma when compared the non-leaded stuff nowadays.
I laughed so hard when I saw all the students smell the freshly printed test papers in Fast Times at Ridgemount High. We all did this at one time or another as Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers.
man i remember me this smell and purple ink in the 70ties school here in switzerland...
I REMEMBER