page_title: Spirit duplicator
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Spirit duplicator / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: The High Valley News vol. 4 no. 4: School newspaper from 1978 published using ditto machine Somebody over on the Spirit duplicator talk page wanted to see an example of something printed on a ditto machine; here's a school newspaper I published as a teen back in 1978 at the small private school I went to. The publication itself is probably non-notable and not a Reliable Source for anything, but it does mention Ted Nelson, whose son attended that school as a classmate of mine. I'm the "Danny" on the winning Team A of the first softball game listed; the "Jimbo" on team B, however, is not Jimbo Wales.
context_page_description: A spirit duplicator is a printing method invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld that was commonly used for much of the rest of the 20th century. The term "spirit duplicator" refers to the alcohols that were a major component of the solvents used as "inks" in these machines. The device coexisted alongside the mimeograph.
  Spirit duplicators were used mainly by schools, churches, clubs, and other small organizations, such as in the production of fanzines, because of the limited number of copies one could make from an original, along with the low cost of copying.
context_section_description: The duplicator uses two-ply "spirit masters", also called "master sheets". The first sheet can be typed, drawn, or written upon. The second sheet is coated with a layer of wax that had been impregnated with one of a variety of colorants. The pressure of writing or typing on the first sheet transfers the colored wax from the second sheet to the shiny/coated back side of the first sheet, producing a mirror image. This produces the same result of a sheet of carbon paper put in backwards. The two sheets are then separated, and the first sheet is fastened onto the drum of the machine, with the back side facing out, acting as a printing plate.
  There is no separate ink used in spirit duplication, as the wax transferred to the back side of the first sheet contains the ink. As the paper to be printed moves through the printer, the solvent is spread across each sheet by an absorbent wick. When the solvent-impregnated paper comes into contact with the back side of the first sheet, it dissolves just enough of the pigmented wax to print the image onto the paper as it goes under the printing drum. One master can produce 40 or so good copies; after that, the copies gradually become paler as the colored wax is used up.
caption: A school newspaper published using a ditto machine in 1978
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