But I remember that odor very well. Also, the smell of that reddish powder the janitor would use to clean up when a kid puked, and the smell of library paste.

I mean, the school had some bubble jet printers by that point, but asking to use them was like asking for the launch codes.

There were a couple laser printers in the school, mainly in the art department and a couple other places, but most of the printers were the old dot matrix or even the old daisy wheel printers.

The IBM PC labs used IBM ProPrinters similar to this one;



None of them were networked, most of the PCs each had their own printer.

They were still using Apple II computers as well, I think they used Epsons or Apple printers with those computers.

I went through the school a couple years ago when we had our 20th class reunion but I didn't really pay attention to the kind of printers used there, I think they probably use networked laser printers now. Laser printers have gotten pretty cheap the past couple years, you can get a good color laser printer for under $300. Sure the bubble jet printers are down to under $50 now, but I think laser printers are more durable, do a better job printing, and you don't have to worry about the ink drying out if you don't use the printer for a while.

They were multiplexed (the teacher had to get me and another student to hook them up right). It was actually pretty cool.

I really miss that line-printer perforated paper.

And they still had rooms set up with typewriters that we used for that class. Most of the typewriters were the old IBM daisy wheels;



Most of the students took at least the basic first level typewriting course, I think it might have even been a graduation requirement to take that course.

I think by the time I graduated or maybe within a year or two afterwards they changed the course name to keyboarding and were using computers then instead of typewriters.

I think I'd been directed to the class for my poor handwriting.

There were only three boys in our class of thirty, and all of us were considered queer in various ways.

My first computer class in college was Fortran, and the sex ratio was skewed the other way.

I was one of the few guys who could type, which gave me a slight advantage. My programs were prettier too because I didn't have much incentive to skimp on variable names or comments, unlike the hunt-and-peck typists.

the janitor pushed around on the school basement floor with a big broom. I wonder if he developed lung disease as a result of inhaling that stuff.

It's used to keep the dust down while sweeping and to absorb liquids. I see it on construction jobs all the time. We call it Dry Sweep.

From Fast Times at Ridgemont High:

I don't remember sniffing it, but I remember the smell...

I used to sniff them when fresh from the mailbox.

The library at my college in the late '60s had a copier that was about the size of a Volkswagen. If you wanted to copy a few pages of a book you'd have to wait awhile for the student ahead of you to finish their copy project. Then you'd put the book down on the glass, close the lid, put a dime in the slot (in those days a dime would buy you a couple of big Mars candy bars or a soda or a cup of coffee), push the button and wait. And wait. And wait. The machine would hummmmmmmmmmmm, and gradually, after maybe a minute, it would emit the copy. Then you'd repeat the process. It was very, very slow.

They had a large laser printer, it was probably the size of a small car with a continuous feed for paper. The company performed business services for medical offices - billing, etc. They used the printer for printing out billing statements to send to people, along with putting them in envelopes, sorting them, and mailing them out.

I still remember the smell. Boy, Recursion, does that bring back memories.

very basic letters too. I can never forget that smell!

Yeah saw plenty of those in school. By the time I got to high school though they weren't being used as much.

i operated a mimeograph at a social service agency 40 years ago.

Mimeographs used simple mundane non smelling black ink. Dittos were good for, say fifty copies before they faded into nothing, while mimeographs were were strong for hundreds and hundreds of copies

Lots of people think mimeograph and Ditto are the same thing, which they aren't. I wonder how many school fires went COMPLETELY out of control when they got to the room with the gallons of alcohol you needed to make the Ditto process work.

We used German denatured alcohol to clean our map boards...it smells WAY different from the kind you get in the US.

Butanone (methyl ethyl ketone) gives it that unique sweet smell. From what I see, it's not just Germany, but a standard for the entire European union.

He'd cut off one side with a tin snips and have a nice little drawer that fit in a cabinet he made.

My girlfriends and I had a little crime ring going in our junior year of high school. Our psychology teacher insisted on giving us the standardized tests provided by the publisher. The tests were difficult--either that or they just weren't good tests because they were made up by the publisher.

Regardless, we knew our teacher ran off the tests on the ditto machine prior to our 1 p.m. class.

After she ran off the test, she would throw the purple stencil in the office waste basket.

We would abscond with the stencil and the three of us would use it to look up the answers on lunch hour. Then we would all get As on the subsequent test.

We took turns swiping the test out of the wastebasket in the office. It happened to be Susie's day to swipe the test, and she somehow got the purple ink all over her hands. She couldn't get it off.

"Out, out damned spot!" But 1 p.m. came and Susie still had purple hands, despite all the scrubbing in the restroom. Regardless, she took the test. Our co-conspirator, Vicki, and I sat on either side of her and every time we would look at her taking the test with purple hands, we would go into a fit of laughter.

Sheer wonder our teacher never figured it out, and our crime ring operated quite happily until the end of the term.


Cher

But I also remember red and green. My arithmetic tests were always red.

Your friend in crime needed some strong alcohol to dissolve and remove the purple wax.

The big Xerox machine was for school administrators. It lived in its own special room. They'd print mountains of paper to send home with students. Much of it ended up littering the school grounds and surrounding neighborhood.

We teachers had to use ditto machines. When supplies ran out later in the school year we'd buy our own, or stop by Kinko's (a copy place now owned by FedEx), or use the chalkboard.

Science teachers were expected to do labs too, with a "budget" of a few cents per student.

My wife's sister is still teaching science. Not much has changed, except the school replaced chalkboards with white boards, so now teachers end up buying their own markers a few weeks into the school year.

I used to buy my own colored chalks, but the school rarely ran out of the ordinary yellow-white chalk.

They had a lockbox on the chalk tray below the chalkboard that only tenured professors had access to (not adjuncts or non-tenure-track).

My advisor was convinced they were worried the students were going to snort it. And this was BU, so that may be fair...

He bought his own TV and VCR for school, he claimed them on his tax returns. He did that so he wouldn't have to worry about the few TV/VCRs the social studies department had not being available when he needed them. At the reunion I learned he is still alive and is planning to make quite the donation in his will when his time comes.

But I know it was about to get phased out -- It was old, in poor condition, and the print quality was very shoddy...

I asked one of my friends who now works at our old high school, and he said the district kept the ditto machine running until about 2003 when the one guy who knew how to fix it retired. Then they finally scrapped it.

still has one.