Another of my duties was to check the duplicator machines. There was another room in back of the office that was devoted entirely to duplication. The school did have a small printing press, but it was for large runs of say a sheet that had to go to say, the entire 8th grade class or the whole school. In the days right before copy machines, duplicator machines dominated the education world as the means for supplying mass printing to a small audience, such as a class room full of students. These were more commonly known as ditto machines.
Copies were made on a duplicator machine first by preparing the duplication master. This looked like a simple two part form with several holes in the top of the form. You simply wrote hard with a pen, or typed what you needed to convey to the students. Then you tore off the top sheet and loaded the bottom sheet in the duplicator machine. This master now attached to a rotating drum. The person making the dittos operated the machine by turning a handle that rotated the drum. There was a stack of paper that was automatically feed into the machine. The drum had a fluid that had alcohol in it. A light coating of fluid was spread over the master and this came in contact with a blank sheet of paper and made a copy of the master. Sure it was light and purple, but it was the best we had. If you got a copy that had recently been made, you could still smell the duplicator fluid. It was scented with a rather pleasant smell, almost a grape smell. Each turn of the handle netted one more copy. It was my job to make sure each machine was filled with fluid and to make sure each machine had a good supply of paper stacked by it. There must have been ten machines in this room. I remember doing the actual duplication of a memo or two. One time, some one else did a memo on a duplicator machine and then distributed it. All it said at the very top was, "Teachers, remember not to waste paper." And then there was an almost full sheet of blank space.
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