[Dixielandjazz] Re: Mimeograph

[Dick Miller]

dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com writes:
>16. What did all the really savvy students do when mimeographed tests
>were 
>handed out in school?
> a. Immediately sniffed the purple ink, as this was believed to get you
>high 
> b. Made paper airplanes to see who could sail theirs out the window 
> c. Wrote another pupil's name on the top, to avoid their failure

A minor correction: the purple ink was a Rexograph copy; Mimeographs used
black ink that was relatively odorless. The purple ink came from a
carbon-paper like backing that put the pigment on the back of the waxy
cover sheet. The pigment was then dissolved onto the copies by a solvent,
which was where the odor came from. The Mimeograph was a stencil that was
cut to allow ink to go through; no solvents involved, thus relatively
little odor. The Rexograph had the advantage of being easy to draw
freehand on, but it was good for a limited number of copies from a single
master. Mimeographs were good for thousands of copies, but you had to cut
the stencil with a special tool, making graphics much more difficult.

As a public school teacher in NYC for a dozen years, I was responsible for
generating quite a number of each kind of copy. I used to pride myself on
being able to get several hundred legible copies from a Rexograph master,
when a hundred was considered a good run. ;-)

--Dick Miller