The school duplicator

[mow]

It was about as big as a typewriter, it was cranked by hand, it stank of meths and the printing on the copies was a fetching shade of purple.

 

What were those things called?

 

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Block_and_Anderson

 

Different coloured backing sheets enabled the users to produced coloured diagrams, texts whilst under the influence of meths or something similar.  

[Nearholmer]

I rather like the fact that in the material in that link, the company boasts that its portable adding machine weighs only 11lbs.

[enginelane]

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Block_and_Anderson

 

Different coloured backing sheets enabled the users to produced coloured diagrams, texts whilst under the influence of meths or something similar.

 

Banda machine, the saviour of any young teacher of my generation. Quite complicated pieces of work could be produced with some care. The liquid used to make my eyes water

[C.A.T.Ford]

It was only Geography teachers who ever used more than one colour though.

Priming the thing (pressing down on the plastic tank that contained the fluid* was an art in itself. A skilled operator could get more than twice as many copies as anyone else before all the ink on the master had all disappeared.

 

* That fluid was a pretty strong solvent.... the kids still believe staff disappeared to the staff room for a quick fag.

In truth a quick fag near a Banda machine would have been dangerous as the fluid was industrial Meths. However this was never mentioned  and it was typical to find someone cranking away with a cigarette in their mouth. Mind you unless you knew where the machine was in the staffroom it could be difficult to find in the perpetual cigarette smog.

[Colin_McLeod]

I remember the weekly operating notice at Northern Ireland Railways being produced by a duplicating machine until around the mid 1980s when the company invested in what was then "state of the art" - a word processor and printer that was about the size of a fridge freezer and required its own air conditioned room.

[chrisf]

I'm certain that the machine described by Spikey is the Banda.  Other machines such as the Roneo or Gestetner were used for different applications.  I don't recall how the masters - that's documents, not teachers - were produced on the Banda but the Roneo/Gestetner used wax-based stencils.  Corrections were made, preferably before the stencil was clipped to the duplicator, with bright red correcting fluid that must have doubled as nail varnish on occasion.

 

A Banda would never have coped with some jobs entrusted to the Roneo/Gestetner.  The hard working machine in the office at my first senior school had churned out a science textbook for the use of first-years, written by the teacher because no suitable book existed in the publishing world.  The same teacher also edited and published a magazine aimed at the two lowest year groups.  This may be where my memory wobbles but if it is functioning correctly it tells me that the stencil could be cut in two so as to get two upright pages on a stencil which would not fit into a typewriter carriage of the day horizontally.  All this extra-curricular work now makes me wonder, nearly 60 years later, whether the guy had a life.

 

I started this post with the objective of working in a joke, possibly from the time of Shakespeare: Roneo, Roneo, wherefore art thou Roneo?  In the office of course.  Boom boom.

 

Chris  

[w124bob]

There's probably some kid somewhere called Roneo!

[PatB]

My primary school had a Banda machine. IIRC the stencil sheets were available in blue, red, green and (I think) black. It was still doing sterling service when I left in 1978.

 

Secondary school had just acquired a new-fangled photocopier, which the technician (the only member of staff allowed to touch it, as I recall) took great delight in using to create images of various of his body parts. It caught fire one day as a result of a paper-jam, leaving a school of 1000-odd pupils (some very odd; I'm pretty sure I remember these two) without mechanical reproduction facilities for some considerable time.

[jjb1970]

The old ways were best, schools were happier and more learned places when teachers required nought more than a duplicating machine, a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and an arsenal of corporal punishment implementation tools.

[Northroader]

And a harmonium in the hall.

[spikey]

And a harmonium in the hall.

I can never see the word "harmonium" without instantly hearing "Abide With Me".  I wonder if playing that on the harmonium was compulsory in the same way as every child who picks up a recorder has to sooner or later play Three Blind Mice.

 

Be that as it may, mention of the early Xerox machines brought back happy memories of being an acneous 15-year-old in his first job, sent to the typing pool with a document to be copied.  Queen of the Xerox was a teenage trollop called Winking* Wendy, who was apparently the only one in the typing pool allowed to use it, on account of her having been on A Course, which allegedly necessitated her being accompanied for the weekend by her boss ...

 

* Or similar 

Edited October 22, 2017 by spikey

[martin_wynne]

I still have a duplicator. And a box of unused wax stencils. And some red correcting fluid. And some tubes of ink. And about 5000 sheets of coloured foolscap (13" x 8") duplicator paper.

 

Well you never know.

 

I used it in the 1970s to create the instructions for my pointwork kits. Creating diagrams by cutting lines with a craft knife through the stencil was tricky. It was necessary to leave gaps in the lines about every 1/2", otherwise the whole thing fell to bits.

 

As far as I know it still works. There isn't much to go wrong. And no batteries needed.

 

Martin.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

I always knew it as a Banda too. Apart from the purple, I seem to remember green, red and blue too.

 

Today we just queue up at the photocopier (when it's working) before school starts in the mornings.....

[Fat Controller]

I frittered away some of my sixth-form years as 'Production Editor' of our school newspaper, using what I remember as being a Gestetner; the title simply meant that I'd spend a couple of hours after school trying to get the machine to print something vaguely legible. One of my 'oppos' became a neuro-surgeon; when I remember the mess he made of the printer-drum when trying to get the master copy to lie flat, I shudder. Another, very junior, 'oppo' claimed that the experience made him take an interest in journalism, leading to a very well-paid job on national television. My sole satisfaction with the latter are my mother's comments of 'you wouldn't think he was seven years younger than you' when she sees him present the news.

[DaveF]

Back in those halcyon pre OFSTED days I once had an arranged visit from one of "Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools" who was gathering evidence about school management roles for a report he was writing.

 

When he arrived I was teaching, he walked in to the laboratory (I taught biology), picked up a worksheet I'd prepared some time previously using a Banda and sniffed it.  When I asked why he said it was a habit when he was observing lessons.  If he could smell the alcohol the sheet had only just been printed off, probably as a response to his presence in the school.  He said it was often symptomatic of a poorly organised teacher who prepared things at the last minute.

 

If there was no smell the sheet had been prepared earlier and was obviously a normal part of the activity for the lesson he was observing.

 

He was most insistent it wasn't just to get a quick alcohol fix!

 

David

Edited October 22, 2017 by DaveF

[45156]

Yes, Banda was the spirit duplcator, and the Roneo/Gestetener had a wax stencil - and the latter was able to handle a higher capacity, as the Banda sytem relied on dissolving the ink on the master using the spirit, so it could only cope with about fifty copies before the master "dissolved" .  At my primary school, this was all they needed for the exam papers, but when I got to secondary, as there was a lot more pupils, they used the Roneo/Gestetner system, as it was not so limited as it could produce a lot more as the master did not wear out - more ink made more copies.

[Horsetan]

Oh God, all this duplicator history brings back vague memories of the 1970s in school. I can sort of remember that the work sheets handed out to us back then were invariably in purple ink.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...  The hard working machine in the office at my first senior school had churned out a science textbook for the use of first-years, written by the teacher because no suitable book existed in the publishing world. ...All this extra-curricular work now makes me wonder, nearly 60 years later, whether the guy had a life...  

Well of course he did. If he could write a textbook, then he was on top of the job, and he didn't get inspected every ten minutes either.

 

More significantly, there were slaves to do the hack work if my secondary ed. experience was anything like typical. This wasn't totally unpopular among the slaves either. If you were of the female disposition you might regularly spend a winter day break period snug in the staff room's little kitchen serving the refreshments, and able to have a hot drink and biscuit yourself.  Likewise typing and duplicating (ours was a Roneo) operating the switchboard (that one ran from half an hour before official start time, to an hour after the school day end) managing the process of admission to the feeding troughs in five sittings ('every week a miracle, the feeding of the five thousand') general policing of entry points, full school boundary, and all buildings, running the library, supervising detentions; and my all time favourite in my last three years, creating and updating the entire staff and classroom allocations for lessons aka 'The Timetable'. All these activities had members of staff attached, but only ever called out of the pit of fug in dire emergency.

 

... in the staffroom it could be difficult to find in the perpetual cigarette smog.

The irony was not lost on us, that those miscreants we caught smoking (or 'in possession') on or nearby school were given their rear-end warm up in one of the two caves of the smoking trolls. (Unless they were girls, in which case the senior mistress showed them horrible pictures and made them cry and promise not to do it again...)

Edited October 23, 2017 by 34theletterbetweenB&D

[jjb1970]

I can never see the word "harmonium" without instantly hearing "Abide With Me".  I wonder if playing that on the harmonium was compulsory in the same way as every child who picks up a recorder has to sooner or later play Three Blind Mice.

Crikey, recorders, that brings back a few memories! I was always envious of the spoilt people in my class who were lucky enough to get a delux recorder, you know the ones with the white bit on the end you blew into and a swish velour pouch for storage (you'll recognise my expertise on recorders, the expertise that comes from being left with a life long aversion to the things). I never got past the economy models that the local news agent sold from a cardboard box for about 5p a throw, I had very generous parents. The same news agent sold splendid galoshes, modern kids today that have to exist with inferior quality gym shoes will never know just how deprived they are to be robbed of proper galoshes (mind you, I take my hat off to Converse for figuring out they could stick a star transfer on the side of those old gym shoes and then sell them as a premium fashion item). They were designed with the utmost care and attention to ensure they were the exact weight and shape, with perfect balance in the hand of a teacher, to whack naughty pupils on the a**e and inflict the maximum amount of pain without causing permament disfigurement of the (not that I experienced too many slipperings, just saying like). Although it is debatable as to whether being slippered was better or worse than assemblies sitting on the wooden floor of a hall which had never been sanded down or varnished and ending up with splinters sticking out of your ass and anywhere else that came into contact with the floor as you listened to an uplifting sermon on God by a headmaster with anger management issues and a liking for physical violence inflicted on his pupils. Happy days, it was schools like that that made us the country we are today. I shudder to think of education today, where did it all go wrong?

[Horsetan]

Crikey, recorders, that brings back a few memories! I was always envious of the spoilt people in my class who were lucky enough to get a delux recorder, you know the ones with the white bit on the end you blew into and a swish velour pouch for storage (you'll recognise my expertise on recorders, the expertise that comes from being left with a life long aversion to the things). I never got past the economy models that the local news agent sold from a cardboard box for about 5p a throw, I had very generous parents.

In my day, the most common recorder in the Junior Branch of my school was a moulded plastic effort made by Aulos. I was the only one in my class who had a proper wooden one.

 

The same news agent sold splendid galoshes, modern kids today that have to exist with inferior quality gym shoes will never know just how deprived they are to be robbed of proper galoshes (mind you, I take my hat off to Converse for figuring out they could stick a star transfer on the side of those old gym shoes and then sell them as a premium fashion item)....

Before going into a private school, I can just about remember from state school days that kids coming to school in wellies because they had no school shoes were a sign of a cash-strapped household (or their parents believed expensive leather shoes to be kept for formal occasions). Nowadays the tables have turned and wellies are fashionable, with price tags to match.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Recorders - still alive and kicking in our school.

We have both the treble and descant - thankfully we have a dedicated music teacher but I'm still expected to "have a go".

 

Elephants don't cry ....  E D C.... E D C.......

 

I might actually get it one day.

But then again, probably not.

[pH]

Before going into a private school, I can just about remember from state school days that kids coming to school in wellies because they had no school shoes were a sign of a cash-strapped household (or their parents believed expensive leather shoes to be kept for formal occasions). Nowadays the tables have turned and wellies are fashionable, with price tags to match.

 

Wellies in winter (remember the scarf marks on the legs) and sandshoes in summer. A real sign of poverty (seriously) was wellies in summer.

[John M Upton]

I was lucky as in about 1982 my little rural primary school was one of the first to get a photocopier which was a very basic machine compared with the leviathan devices of today and was the sole jurisdiction of Mrs Caisley who kept breaking it.

 

The Banda machines (yes, machines plural for we had two of them) were retained and were still sitting under a table stinking out a cupboard and leaking quite profusely when I moved onto secondary school in 1986.

[Horsetan]

.....The Banda machines (yes, machines plural for we had two of them) were retained and were still sitting under a table stinking out a cupboard and leaking quite profusely when I moved onto secondary school in 1986.

Maybe they were decomposing.

[BoD]

Old Banda machines don't die ......... they just fade away.

Edited October 24, 2017 by BoD