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Mimeowhat?

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START- INTRO. </b>*} Teachers preparing documents on a mimeograph. Image borrowed from virtualclassroom.org The mimeograph was a technology used for quick and relatively inexpensive duplication of text and basic images from the 1880′s to 1970′s. The whole process from writing to print can be done in a few minutes, with very little technical knowledge and a few tools. The mimeograph came into existence in a burgeoning era of bureaucracy, when quick facsimile productions of text on demand. (And I’ll pause for a moment on that awkwardly phrased “could be” because I first chose the more fluid and determined “made” as if there was a clear line of demand and supply in all technological innovation, as if the technological evolution of invention-built-upon-invention did not have a role in creating the conditions under which bureaucracy burgeoned and bureaucrats demanded copies. 1900 A.B.

Once a stencil is made, it is affixed to the drum, and with some embodiment behind the crank, the imitation writing begins. Mimeograph, n. : Oxford English Dictionary. Mimeograph machine, IPRC. Mimeograph. Illustration of a typical mimeograph machine The stencil duplicator or mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo) is a low-cost printing press that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The mimeograph process should not be confused with the spirit duplicator process. Mimeographs, along with spirit duplicators and hectographs, were a common technology in printing small quantities, as in office work, classroom materials, and church bulletins.

Early fanzines were printed in this technology, because it was widespread and cheap. In the late 1960s, mimeographs, spirit duplicators, and hectographs began to be gradually displaced by photocopying and offset printing. Origins[edit] Thomas Edison received US patent 180,857 for "Autographic Printing" on August 8, 1876.[1] The patent covered the electric pen, used for making the stencil, and the flatbed duplicating press.

The word "mimeograph" was first used by Albert Blake Dick[3] when he licensed Edison's patents in 1887.[4] Mimeo Featured on Perfect Strangers.