Early Photostats at School

[jason h]

When I was about 10 in the early 80s, our teacher made weird photocopies of sheets of paper that were handed out to the class that contained the lines for our Christmas school play. These were done on coloured paper and had gaudy ink for the writing; purple ink on a blue background, that kind of thing. The strange thing about these hand-outs was that they really smelt and made your hands smell after handling them.
Not sure if this was some kind of strange photocopier machine or not. Anyone else remember these?

[willpurry]

Re: Early Photostats at School

We had these. They are run off a spirit duplicator. The purple is wax.

[sixtyten]

Re: Early Photostats at School

Ah! there;s a smell that takes me back to school.
the old purple Banda machine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator

[jason h]

Re: Early Photostats at School

I love this site! Thank you so much for the link. I'm sure if i caught a whiff of it now, it would transport me back to '82 and rehearsing for my role a Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

[Richard1978]

Re: Early Photostats at School

I remember getting worksheets printed on a spirit duplicator when I was at primary school.

Even at secondary school were used to have photocopied worksheets from a hand written original, normally made by a teacher with really hard to read handwriting!

[RetroAEROSMITH]

Re: Early Photostats at School

Does anyone remember when you had a geography lesson there were rollers and ink for each map in the cupboard, the roller was rolled on the ink pad and rolled the length of your excercise book. I remember having a row for rolling a map of asia in my book instead of africa.

I remember the school choir song sheets as mentioned above, plus the later acetate sheets that were viewed on the light projector for school assembly...plus my ultimate school smell was between school soap or the school paints we used in infants.

[80sChav]

Re: Early Photostats at School

I do yes Jason - though not in the same way exactly as you say, but I recall it well.

In those day's nobody had Photo-copiers par schools, and Banks, Building Society's, let alone Printers!

[battyrat]

Re: Early Photostats at School

Certainly can remember those Photostat machines. The image they produced was very grainy and patchy at times and the ink nearly always came off on your hands even when it was dry. Our school never had one but there was one in an office where a mates mum worked.

[80sChav]

Re: Early Photostats at School

The smell that the print gave on the copies after was really strong indeed I recall (not like Scanners etc of today's age at all! I think that his proved the standard of those Photocopying Machines - just like most things similar like Video Machines became of lesser quality)

Great memories indeed recollecting such Photocopying - especially when given them in class and being just warmer than Luke Warm!

80sChav