What is a ditto machine?

Answer 1

A ditto machine is the brand name of a sprit duplicator or a fluid duplicator. They were very widely used in the 1940s through the mid to late 1980s in schools and buisineses to make copies at a very low cost. The color of the copy was usually purple but could be seen in other colors. The process is sometimes confused with mimeographing and while the machines look almost identical the processes are vastly different. The Ditto or spirit process involved typing or handwriting a spirit master (a stencil of sorts). This would cause a small amount of the analine dye to be transfered on to the back of the master then the master would be placed on the drum of the duplicator. As the machine turned (either by hand or motor) a piece of blank paper would be drawn through and moistened with fluid (methyl alcohol) and the the drum would press the damp paper against the master unit with the purple dye and thus a transfer would occur creating a copy. Typically the master could produce up to 500 copies. The process has sadly been replaced by electronic photostatic and other types of copier. The spirit/Ditto machines had very few parts that could breakdown, thus they would "last forever". Many tatoo artists still use the spirit masters to transfer their art forms on the client. They also use a Thermofax machine to take a regular paper drawing and place it on a speacial thermal master to create a dye master, many times with much detail, to transfer to their client. The Thermofax machine is the early version of a photo copier and was used to create masters during the times when this process was widely used. Typically the master created by the thermo units were very short run and could only provide 200 copies before having to create another master.