January 31, 2011

Cool spread of technology - from 1880 to 1976

From Xavier Antin comes this story of printing a book with four different printers. The Magenta is laid down by a Stencil Duplicator from 1880. Cyan, a Spirit Duplicator from 1923 (I still fondly remember that wonderful smell of a fresh print). Black - Laser Printer from 1969. Yellow - InkJet printer from 1976. The printing chain:
book_printer.jpg
A sample page:
book_printer_page.jpg
Not the tightest registration but pretty damn cool! Posted by DaveH at January 31, 2011 9:19 PM
Comments

I remember starting in 1979 at the insurance agency where the copier, made by 3-M, was basically a lightbox, where you took the original document, placed it between specially coated paper and a pink colored onionskin type paper, placed it onionskin down on a powerful light, exposed it for 60 seconds, then removed the original, placed the onionskin on top of the coated paper and ran it through a heat roller. Making copies was excruciatingly boring, but quite a step up from typing waxed mimeos and running the rolling mimeo machine. Ain't technology grand?

Posted by: Amazed at February 1, 2011 8:50 AM