With today's municipal bulky pick-up this dinosaur ends 30 years of service for me without a single repair, ever. It died abruptly last month and I was still using it to honor the occasional request for a print from my large archive of hand-drawn mylars (which I suppose ought to be scanned). Ammonia was getting damned hard to find.
This is like explaining life without cell phones to the youngsters. Too many finding your post may assume that is some sort of mimeograph machine.
>Too many finding your post may assume that is some sort of mimeograph machine.
What's a Mimeograph machine?
> >Too many finding your post may assume that is some sort of mimeograph machine.
>
> What's a Mimeograph machine?
Lot different than an Ozalid machine, that's for sure. Ask the Young'uns what that is!
I'M 40. Is that young and should I be familiar with that term? Is it a copier machine? And what the heck is an Ozalid machine? Is there an app for that?
I never thought of hooking an electric typewriter directly to a blue-line machine!!
Where can I find one of those cords? I've tried googling, but haven't found anything yet..........
When I was green running one of those was my inside job. It would burn nose hairs off. I was happy to see that get put on the shelf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozalid_process
There was a mimeograph machine in every school that could possibly afford to have one fifty years ago. The aroma coming from that machine might cause one to have dreams of one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple, people-eaters.
Working with the reproduction of drawings thirty to forty years ago was like being locked in a closet with 100 little packets of smelling salts all being popped open at once.
Telephones used to be screwed to the wall, but TV's were not.
It was only a few years ago that a few clients kept insisting that I send them "BLUE LINES" of my surveys.
I made a few "blue inked" prints for them, kinda as a joke.
They all wanted to know what kind of machine it was because they wanted one.
They stopped ordering "BLUE LINES" after they learned my secret, lol.
😀
I ran thousands of blueprints through a blue line machine back in the early 90's, right before I started my surveying career.
I worked for a house designer that was so busy the print room needed help, and I was the new employee.
I am 52.
The last private sector firm I worked for full time laid me off in 1994.
They had an odorless blue line machine. It had an oily developer fluid which had the ammonia suspended in it.
The Blue Line machine:
* It used packs of large size paper which came in a black plastic wrapper.
* The paper is coated with a yellow stuff. It looks yellow. When exposed to UV light it burns off.
* You pull out a piece of yellow copy paper, put the translucent original (on mylar film or vellum) on top of the yellow paper and run it through the lower UV section of the machine. Then you take the copy paper (which is now all white except for yellow lines where the black ink on the original blocked the light) and put it through the upper developer section.
* The ammonia would turn the yellow blue and fix it so it would be somewhat permanent.
* Often these machines used ammonia vapor to develop the copy paper, hence the terrible smell.
They had automatic machines that you just put the original in and it automatically took some copy paper off the roll, cut it and ran it through the upper section. I think they could even do multiple copies.
Dave,
That sounds a lot like the machine I ran prints through. Our machine was not odorless, though. You could smell the ammonia.
Jimmy
I have a branch office that still runs a blue line machine. Still reliable and they still find the ammonia for it.
I'm familiar with a blue line machine.
I had a former employer keep his blue line machine running by using plastic caps as chain tensioners. He was still using a pen plotter the last I heard (2006). His theory, "If it ain't broke, don't spend money to fix it".
I just dismantled mine and hauled it to the dump, (transfer station) last weekend. Staples is just across the street.
I still have 4 gallons of ammonia to get rid of. Maybe a few years worth of glass cleaner?
Also have a supply of print paper, sepia paper and mylar sepia stuff. I can't think of much use for any of it.
Ozalid is a brand name, it is Diazo backwards with an L added to make it more pronounceable.
Ok how many remember a vacuum frame copier? The first layering system was analog.
> Ozalid is a brand name, it is Diazo backwards with an L added to make it more pronounceable.
I didn't know that - it's a nice bit of trivia!