Nun drawing copier ?

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Nun drawing copier ?

Postby Harry Dalek » Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:08 pm

Some thing i recall as a child from school in the 60's was when the Nuns came to a regular religious class not really interesting but the drawing copier is lost in time now.
Well they used to bring with them a tin pan bit bigger than A4 sized paper and it used to have a thick jelly in it dark blue or purple no idea what the hell it was but they used to have us copy drawings they wanted all the class to have via this ,how i recall it worked they put the original flat down on the jelly a roller to roll it for a nice contact then peeled off the original then every one in the class sort of had to copy what the nuns had done with a blank paper by the last person the copy was pretty faint ...and if you stuffed it up the Nuns had a cane :oops:
Never really ever knew what this stuff was but in the 1960s this is the closest to a photo copier type thing i ever saw , i don't think it was to good for you either had a methylated spirits smell .
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Postby Steve Anderson » Tue Dec 18, 2012 12:24 am

Was the Meths-based copier called something like a 'Gestetner'? I remember those in Melbourne too...was actually quite a nice smell..the copies often had a purple-like tinge to them...

...unlike dye-line printing which used Ammonia and smelt like an unwashed Gents bog...

...if you've ever been to India...you'll know exactly what I mean!!

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Postby Dave Moll » Tue Dec 18, 2012 10:59 pm

Steve Anderson wrote:Was the Meths-based copier called something like a 'Gestetner'? ...the copies often had a purple-like tinge to them...

That description sounds more like a "Banda" to me. My memories of Gestetner copiers were of cutting a stencil (usually using a typewriter with the ribbon removed) - which then produced black printing (often with solid black inside loops of letters where the bit of the stencil in the middle of the letter had fallen out).
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Postby Steve Anderson » Tue Dec 18, 2012 11:21 pm

Ah yes Dave! Quite correct, this link refers...

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

An example of what I was thinking of is below...

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Postby Harry Dalek » Wed Dec 19, 2012 5:02 pm

Yes looking at the paper guys thats colour of the drawings we ended up with ,it was very thick and bright for the first few copies and faint by the end .
It could of been a wax but i recall one fellow in my class who stuck hes finger in it.....it looked more like a thick jelly thats also why i remember the cane part ... :shock: lets say no one ever did that again !

Thanks for the links i read more and see what those Nuns were up to making that stuff!
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Postby Klaas Robers » Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:39 am

This reminded me of something written in the first Newsletter. In 1973 this was called idea sheets and they "were reproduced by a spirit duplicator". So our LDTV (Low Definition Tele Vision) club started with it. So it were not only nuns that used it.

In 1958, when I was 14, I started to follow a postal correspondence course in radio technology, and that was also made by the spirit duplicator. At least it was in blue and with rather fat characters. I still have the original sheets and they are very well readable in 2012. So it was not at all a bad process.
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Postby gary » Fri Dec 21, 2012 12:51 pm

Do I sense the beginning of a new project Harry? ;-)
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Postby Harry Dalek » Fri Dec 21, 2012 10:22 pm

gary wrote:Do I sense the beginning of a new project Harry? ;-)


No no i am just pleased other people remember it and i now have a name for what those Nuns were up to .
Thats interesting to know Klaas that NBTV newsletter started that way ,so this copy system lasted to the 70s....i suppose these days in in a 3rd world country they would just use a PC and printer.
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Postby Steve Anderson » Fri Dec 21, 2012 11:17 pm

harry dalek wrote:....i suppose these days in in a 3rd world country they would just use a PC and printer.


Now, whatever the government of Thailand and the tourist agents may tell you, this is in many respects still a third-world country. I have recently visited two architects offices here, one still had a 'drawing office' where people were still using basically tracing paper for original drawings then dye-line printing copies (the stinky Ammonia stuff).

The other was using AutoCad...sure...WOW! But v14.1 that runs on DOS 6.22! Then farming out the A1 or A0 prints to a copy-shop,

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Needless to say I didn't recommend either to my client.
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Postby gary » Fri Dec 21, 2012 11:24 pm

harry dalek wrote:No no ...


Pity ;-)

Actually, this type of "copier" was still in use at the engineering company I started with in 1972 - it was to be another 2-3 years before they bought their first Xerox type machine.

OTOH it may not have been the exact same type as these copies very definitely DID fade with time.

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Postby gary » Fri Dec 21, 2012 11:45 pm

Steve Anderson wrote:where people were still using basically tracing paper for original drawings then dye-line printing copies (the stinky Ammonia stuff).

The other was using AutoCad...sure...WOW! But v14.1 that runs on DOS 6.22! Then farming out the A1 or A0 prints to a copy-shop,



Hah! I might be able to get a job there, tracing paper and dye-line printing no problem, I started with AutoCAD Version 1.2 - I don't think I quite made it to V14... But Hey! I could bring my own Houston Instruments DMP 50 series digital plotter (circa 1985) - what do you think?
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Postby Viewmaster » Fri Dec 21, 2012 11:59 pm

gary wrote:
Steve Anderson wrote:where people were still using basically tracing paper for original drawings then dye-line printing copies (the stinky Ammonia stuff).

The other was using AutoCad...sure...WOW! But v14.1 that runs on DOS 6.22! Then farming out the A1 or A0 prints to a copy-shop,



Hah! I might be able to get a job there, tracing paper and dye-line printing no problem, I started with AutoCAD Version 1.2 - I don't think I quite made it to V14... But Hey! I could bring my own Houston Instruments DMP 50 series digital plotter (circa 1985) - what do you think?


When last in a design drawing office I used a 2H pencil and an adjustable protractor......... with a rubber tooooooooo :shock:
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Postby gary » Sat Dec 22, 2012 12:06 am

Viewmaster wrote:When last in a design drawing office I used a 2H pencil and an adjustable protractor.........


looxury - when I started all we had was a thumbnail dipped in tar - no rubber - if we made a mistake we were thrashed within an inch of our lives... Aah those were the days.
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Postby Steve Anderson » Sat Dec 22, 2012 1:30 pm

AutoCad probably started for me with v8 or v9, most likely on DOS 5.0, early 80s, say 82? Two monitors, a 20" monochrome main screen and a 12/14" green-screen for the command line info. No mouse, only the tablet and puck. (Careful how you say that).

Around that same time was probably the last time I did a drawing on 'tracing paper'. What's the correct term for that stuff? Draghting paper? And the last time I stood most of the day at an A0 draghting board. I never got used to, or comfortable with, a draphting stool/chair.

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Postby gary » Sat Dec 22, 2012 2:00 pm

Actually the first AutoCad version (1.0) in 1982 - so if it was 82 for you then it would have been the same version as I started on. For some reason ACad went from v2.6 (I think) to V9 - and I *think* V9 was the last I used - then again I am not sure I even got that far because I went from design draughting to engineering in 86 - but I was aware of it because of the drawing office.

I think we called the paper you refer to as Bond paper - we mostly used Mylar - the plastic type of paper - but the schematic I posted a photo of recently was Bond paper though (drawn in '86 so prob on ACad 2.6).

I started off in '78 on a system called Autotrol, which was a turn key system. The system you describe sounds very much like that (with the two screens) but I suppose you would know if it was a turn key system or not. In addition the 2 screens were built into a workstation. Autotrol didn't use a mouse either it used 2 thumb-wheels at 90 degrees to each other - I actually liked that arrangement for drawing - crap for menu selection though ha ha.

Oh and I forgot - I learned my draughting at the drawing board too - starting in about '76 - but I remember now that when I started with the ABC in about '82 I was back at the board for a year because they had not invested in CAD yet - I like to think I helped change their mind on that as they were impressed with the drawings I had attached to my CV - all done on Autotrol.
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