Sociology and Message formatting (Spiritusumdrucker)

All, As a matter of fact, mimeograph/ditto/Spiritusumdrucker machines provided me with one of my favorite examples of "antique" technology's applicability. My wife was teaching at a high school in the early 1990's that had a way over-subscribed photocopier and an idle mimeograph machine. She made handouts on our Mac Plus using WriteNow and SuperPaint (both fantastic programs). She then printed them onto mimeograph masters using our ImageWriter 1, an *impact* (dot-matrix) printer, at home the night before class. She'd take the master to school in the morning, hook it up to the mimeograph machine, and crank out 250 copies as fast as she could turn the crank - then stroll to class past the line of frantic teachers awaiting their turn on the photocopier, having saved the school appx. $10 in copying costs. She could also save and modify files and print new masters at her convenience. No need to carefully retype or coddle a master for a whole year for next year's class, or try to stretch a dying master for 30 more prints. It was a great system. BTW, she later convinced me to *give away* the Imagewriter in favor of a Stylewriter (inkjet) we recieved as a gift, just prior to moving to Texas. Not one of my better decisions. Ah well. - Mark