General Information

Serial #

42J59

Part Number

1

Total Parts

1

AKA

N/A

Patents

N/A

General Description

Metal with felt cover on printing stage and wood handle, paper wrapped around rollers - rollers are metal, rubber feet/ sticky substance on paper covering rollers (remains of a gelatine coating?)

Dimensions

Note: These reflect the general size for storage and are not necessarily representative of the object's true dimensions.

Length

55.5 cm

Width

46.5 cm

Height

28.5 cm

Thickness

N/A

Weight

N/A

Diameter

N/A

Volume

N/A

Lexicon

Group

Printing

Category

Duplication

Sub-Category

N/A

Manufacturer

AKA

Ditto

Country

United States of America

State/Province

Illinois

City

Chicago

Context

Country

Unknown

State/Province

Unknown

Period

Unknown

Canada

Taken from acquisition proposal: This hectograph is a direct predecessor of the Ditto spirit duplicator, which became the primary small-scale duplicator brand used in Canada in the mid-twentieth century. Widely used in the United States and Canada, hectographs like this one were common in offices and stores before the commercialization of spirit duplicators. Their primary use was to reproduce handwritten departmental orders and captions for circulation within businesses and offices.

Function

To make multiple copies of a document.

Technical

Taken from acquisition proposal: To perform the duplicating process, the user would first create a master sheet, handwritten with a slow-drying aniline ink. This sheet would be pressed face-down on the duplicator’s flat surface, under the platen roller. As the user passed the roller over the back of the sheet, the gelatinized duplicating band would absorb most of the ink, creating a mirror image. The user could then place multiple sheets of paper into the feeder slot on the platen roller, which would slip through one by one onto the gelatin surface. As the user continued to pass the roller over each sheet of paper, the pressure from the roller would transfer the ink to the surface of the paper, creating a duplicate copy. One master sheet could create fifteen to forty copies. Smaller models, like this one, included only one duplicating band, but larger models could accommodate two duplicating bands (see Patent No. 965,887) to allow a variety of documents to be printed under a single header or caption. While hectographs continued to be used for duplication into the 1970s (and later for the purposes of artistic printmaking), the advent of the cheaper and more efficient spirit duplicator marked the end of Ditto’s commercial hectograph production. Ditto spirit duplicators became so popular, in fact, that the term ‘ditto machine’ soon became public shorthand for all spirit duplicators on the market, regardless of manufacturer. This type example of a Ditto machine, representing the copying process immediately preceding the invention of spirit duplication, grants insight into the influential trademark’s early history. It’s also the sole type example currently in the national collection that represents gelatin-based (hectograph) duplication technology.

Area Notes

Unknown

Details

Markings

Painted on side 'REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. [pair of large quotation marks inside a circle]/ Ditto/ Ditto Incorporated - Chicago/ Patented Aug. 2, 1910 March 5, 1912. Nov. 24, 1914. June 1, 1915. July 16, 1918. PATENTS/ PENDING./ MADE IN U.S.A.'/ Plate marked '42J59'/ Painted 'OIL'.

Missing

N/A

Finish

Body painted green with gold lettering and trim; some unfinished silver coloured working parts; green felt cover on printing stage; black substance rollers.

Decoration

Gold coloured piping around frame.