The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  However, office managers have had other kinds of small-scale publishing methods available to them for more than a century. The words used to describe them were more modest, of course.

  At first, they talked about office “copying,” and later they called it “duplicating.” Only today, with computers, coupled with high-definition laser output has the technology grown up enough to earn the term “Desktop Publishing.”

  Desktop Publishing’s first century began in 1856, when British chemist William Perkins discovered the first synthetic dye, aniline purple. This dye pointed the way to a wide range of new inks, including “copying ink” used in the first practical method of reproducing business documents. An original written with copying ink was placed against a moistened sheet of tissue, the two were pressed together in a massive iron press, and a copy would appear on the tissue. Since the copy was backwards, the tissue had to be held up to the light to be read.

  The copy press became a fixture in every Victorian office. Today, they are sold in antique shops as “book presses,” their true function long forgotten.

  Aniline dyes also made another copying process possible. It was invented during the 1870’s, and although it was sold under many brand names, generically it was known as the “hektograph.” The device used a stiff gelatin pad coupled with special hektographic ink made with aniline dye. A document written with the ink was pressed to the pad. The gelatin absorbed the ink after a few minutes, and the original was removed. Blank sheets were then pressed against the pad, and the gelatin released a little of the ink each time, producing a positive copy.

  The hektograph was good for about 50 copies. 20th-century spirit duplicators (such as “Ditto”) were a later outgrowth of the hektograph and much easier to use. About the same time as the invention of the hektograph, the first stencil duplicators began to appear.

  These used various devices to perforate waxed tissue paper, creating stencils through which ink could be passed. The first of these was Thomas Edison’s Electric Pen of 1876. This gadget used current to vibrate the point of a stylus, creating tiny holes in the stencil to form the image.

  A simpler solution came from Eugenio Zuccato who invented the Trypograph in London in 1877. Zuccato put his stencil on the surface of an iron file. When he wrote with a plain stylus, the rough file surface punctured the stencil from below. Edison obtained a U.S. patent for a similar process in 1880, although he did nothing with it for several years.

  In 1881, David Gestetner, working in England, invented another simple stencil perforator. Known as the Cyclostyle, it was a pen with a miniature toothed wheel on the end. By writing on the stencil, the wheel rolled along and punched tiny perforations in the sheet.

  The last major player to enter the stencil game was A.B. Dick of Chicago. Dick was a lumber merchant who needed a way to duplicate the often-needed inventory lists in his business. Experimenting on his own in 1884, he came up with a file-plate stencil process similar to Zuccato’s and Edison’s, but more practical. Dick saw real market potential in the product and applied for a patent only to find that Edison had beaten him to it. Dick contacted Edison, and proposed the idea of selling the device to the public. Dick’s most brilliant idea in the venture, however, was not the invention itself, but his plan to use Edison’s name on the label! Edison’s name had true star quality in the 1880’s.

  Dick coupled it with an intriguing brand-name taken from the Greek, and in 1887 the Edison “Mimeograph” duplicator was born. For several years, the Mimeograph and Cyclostyle duplicators coexisted, each performing the same function using their slightly different methods. With each, finished stencils were placed in a wooden frame so that ink could be pressed through them with a roller. It was messy but effective.

  At this earliest stage, however, neither device effectively exploited the Typewriter, another new invention which seemed perfectly suited to be teamed with duplicators.

  The Typewriter had been around for about ten years when the Mimeograph and Cyclostyle appeared. Duplicator stencils, however, were backed with thin tissue which was often torn to pieces under the pounding of typewriters. A.B. Dick pounced on the solution to the problem when he bought rights to an 1888 patent for a new stencil backed by a sturdy porous tissue.

  The typewriter would penetrate the wax, but not the tissue. Suddenly, the potential for producing thousands of copies from a typewritten original was created.

  In 1891, Gestetner helped the technology along another step, by creating an “automatic” printing device, which worked much faster than the old manual wooden frame. A rivalry between Dick and Gestetner might have developed, but instead, their relationship was cordial. In 1893, they agreed to share patents, each using the typewriter stencil and the automatic printer in his own products, and each prospering in the process.

  The turn of the century brought the development of rotary stencil machines, which meant that copies could finally be “cranked out” in the literal sense. A.B. Dick’s version of this device was a single drum model with ink inside the drum and forced directly through the stencil. Gestetner marketed a double-drum design, inking the stencil with rollers, which picked up the ink from a tube. Other manufacturers introduced their own models, but for years the two principal names in the industry were Mimeograph from Dick and Cyclostyle from Gestetner.

  As stencil duplicators developed for long runs, carbon paper began to replace the copy press for short runs.

  Carbon paper was invented in 1806, but was not practical for making copies written with the light pressure of pen and ink. Typewriters changed the situation. Copying with carbons was called “manifolding,” and some typewriters were sold claiming the ability to make up to 25 carbon copies at once!

  An alternative duplicating method for very long runs became available after the turn of the century in a device called the Gammeter or Multigraph. This was actually a small rotary printing press, with grooves in its cylinder allowing type to be easily set on the surface. Setting the type took more work than producing a stencil, of course, so the Multigraph’s use was limited. The 20th century brought other new potentials to “office duplicating” advancing it considerably toward “desktop publishing.”

  Among the new devices was the Vari-Typer, an evolved form of the old Hammond Typewriter, which had been on the market since 1884. The Hammond was distinctive in that it typed with a single type element, a simple curved strip which could be quickly changed for a variety of typestyles.

  In the 1920’s Hammond added variable pitch to its machines, making typestyles in widely different sizes practical for the same machine. Later, the Hammond was renamed Vari-Typer, and the Ralph Coxhead Corporation took it over. The Vari-Typer was electrified and equipped with differential spacing and line justification.

  Lines were justified by typing them twice. The first typing determined the number of letters on the line, which was set on a dial. This altered the word spacing to align the right margin for the second typing.

  No longer was this machine called a typewriter. It was known as a cold typesetter, and Vari-Typers using the basic Hammond design were in production until the 1970’s. The Vari-Typer could be used to type Mimeograph stencils, although this was a bit cumbersome.

  Much easier was its use with photo-lithography, which appeared in the 1930’s. As today, an original was created on plain paper, and a litho plate was produced from it by photography. Back then it was not as easy as it is today, but the concept was the same. Special materials were also available allowing the original to be typed directly on a thin, flexible printing plate. Thousands of copies could be printed on a small offset printing press from a Vari-Typer original.

  Such devices were used to produce the surrender documents signed by Japan aboard the Battleship Missouri at the end of World War Two.

  The combination of typewriters, Vari-typers, Mimeographs, Multigraphs, offset litho machines and spirit duplicators carried our developing desktop publishing technology through to the end of its fir
st century in 1956.

  Electrostatic copying, which first appeared in 1938, was just beginning to make a big impact as the 1960’s approached.

  “Xerox” was starting to become a household word, but high-volume plain paper copiers would take a while to become the inexpensive fixtures they are today.

  In 1956, computers had not reached desktop publishing capability, and the instant print shop was still years away.

  The Vari-Typer, however, would soon find a competitor in IBM’s Selectric Typewriter, introduced in 1960, and later available in typesetting versions with all the features offered by Vari-Typers.

  The first century of desktop publishing offered tremendous progress for people who wanted to turn out printed material on a small scale. However, the second century so far has been nothing less than amazing.

  Who, after all, would have ever dreamed that an entire publication could be written, edited, typeset and composed before even the first drop of ink was applied to the first piece of paper?

  Source: The Office Magazine; Early Typewriter Collectors’ Association

  Military Telegraphy, Balloon Semaphore

  From Bradley O’Neill

  “Balloons were used for observation in the sieges of Conde (1793), Maubeuge (1794), and Charleroi (1784); in the battle of Fleurs (1794) and Gosselins (1794); and later in the campaign along the Rhine (1795).. In each instance two balloonist officers went aloft in a balloon held captive with two ropes by sixteen men.

  “Messages to the ground crew were communicated by the use of red, yellow, and green flags some eighteen inches square; messages to the general were dropped in bags weighed down with ballast and marked by a pennant or streamer. No one might handle these last save one of the Ballooning Corps officers. The balloon made a great impression on the Austrians, who on one occassion attempted with near success to shoot it down, but oddly enough did not attempt to imitate it.” [Author’s footnote: At Valenciennes (1793) a French balloon was captured by the Allies, and with it a pigeon carrying dispatches. The enemy indulged their humor by eating the pigeon and by firing the balloon back into the town from a cannon.]

  [This book is a real trip! Plum’s headspace seems pretty visionary for his time. The first paragraph has all the gushy sweep of an Alvin Toffler book-on-tape or a speech by Labor Secretary Reich:]

  “Ours is an age of rapid achievements. Cultivated aptitude has revolutionized the world. Performance has been reduced to a minimum of time and space to a question of time. Long lives are compassed in an ordinary span: distances are no longer appall: we are making the most of time and least of space.the opinion of the world has become a powerful international factor.”

  Then Plum takes us through an expository evolution of speed in warfare via several advancements: running, fires, trumpets, reflections, posts, semaphore, balloon, cipher, and telegraph.

  “In 1794, two companies of French military aeronauts were first deployed in balloons at Fleurs, Maubeage, Charleroi, Mannheim, Ehrenhreitstein, Solferino, and elsewhere.

  “They were not used as couriers, but to observe an enemy below, and sometimes flag signals were used to telegraph from [balloon locations]. This was done in the United States Army on the Potomac and during the Peninsular campaign, in the [US Civil War]. On all such reconnaissances, the balloon was held by ropes.

  “On several occasions, electrical telegraphic connection was had with the aeronaut in the sky. This was first accomplished June 17, 1861, when the War Department in Washington, was placed in instant communication with Professor Lowe, who, from his ‘high estate’, caused the operator at his side to telegraph as follows:

  BALLOON ‘ENTERPRISE’ WASHINGTON, JUNE 17, 1861. TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Sir: This point of observation commands an area of fifty miles in diameter. The city, with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene. I take great pleasure in sending you the first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station, and in acknowledging my indebtedness to your encouragement, for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the military service of country. Yours Respectfully, T.S.C. Lowe”

  [Note that the Yankee tradition of naming war/exploration machines “Enterprise” even extended to a balloon.]

  Source: French Inventions of the Eighteenth Century by Shelby T. McCloy, Kernel Press, 1952. # T26.F8.M2 1952

  Mirror Telegraphy: The Heliograph, the Helioscope, the Heliostat, the Heliotrope

  From Bradley O’Neill

  HELIO-TELEGRAPHY: “As of late [read: late-mid 1800s in Europe/US] the rays of the sun are doing courier service where the electric telegraph could not be built or operated, and such has been the success of sun telegraphing, that it constitutes a new and rapidly developing wonder. This mode of signaling is variously designated as mirror telegraphing, heliographic, helioscopic, heliostatic and heliotropic, all of which seem to be essentially identical in the main principles. But the instruments by which the rays are concentrated and reflected differ somewhat, and hence some are better calculated than others to work at great distances.

  The heliostat was invented by Gravesande, about a century and a half ago.[circa 1718?].

  In 1861, officers of the United States Coast Survey, at work in the Lake Superior regions, demonstrated the usefulness of the mirror, equatorially mounted, for telegraphic purposes, and succeeded in conveying their signals with ease and rapidity a distance of ninety miles.

  During the same year, Moses G. Farmer, an American electrician, a man of infinite invention succeeded in thus telegraphing along the Massachusetts coast from Hull to Nantasket. The next year some English officers introduced the system into the British navy, with modifications and improvement, using at night an electric or calcium light. The signals communicated are made by alternately exposing and cutting off continuous rays of light reflected from one station to another.

  MANCE HELIOGRAPH, “an instrument used by the English, telegraphing is done by pressing a finger key, whereby, flashes of light, of long or short duration, are emitted. These flashes and intervals or spaces are easily made to indicate what in the Morse alphabet are shown by dots, spaces, and dashes.In this way the Morse alphabet may be telegraphed as easily as by an electrized wire. Indeed, ungodly parties have before now, at church, telegraphed across the room without awakening suspicion, by a mere movement of the eyelids.

  It is reported that during the seige of Paris (1870-1), messages were telegraphed therefrom twenty and thirty miles, by the reflection of calcium lights..

  The Mance Heliograph is easily operated by one man, and as it weighs but about seven pounds, the operator can readily carry it and the tripod on which it rests.

  During the Jowaki Afridi expedition sent out by the British-Indian government (1877-8), the heliograph was first fairly tested in war.

  THE HELIOSTAT, “is said to be the first instrument for mirror telegraphy used in war [which war is not explicitly indicated, but likely the US Civil War]. The mirror receives and reflects the sun’s rays, and a clockwork attachment keeps the mirror position to receive the direct sunbeams,which in Nevada, U.S., are said to be so bright as to be hurtful to the eye at a distance of forty miles. Behind the mirror, in the very center, some of the quicksilver is removed, leaving a very small, round, clear space in the glass, through which the operator looks and may watch the reflection from the next station.

  THE HELIOTROPE reflects the rays by mirrors but has no clockwork.

  Source: Plum, William Rattle, 1845-1927. The military telegraph during the Civil War in the United States, with an exposition of ancient and modern means of communication, and of the federal and Confederate cipher systems; also a running account of the war between the states. Microform. PUBLISHER Chicago : Jansen, McClurg & Co.,1882. PHYSDESC 2 v. : ill., port., maps, facsim. SERIES 1) Microbook library of American civilization; LAC 22395.

  The 17th century app store: Schott’s Organum Mathematicum

  From Bradley O’Neill />
  [This machine was essentially an encyclopedia for the various mathematical tasks any 17th century ‘learned gentlemen’ might face. The bone tablets mentioned herein can be thought of as ‘applications’ in the contemporary sense. Each tablet was a long strip swathed with specific calculation rules and tables for specific areas of learning. All of the tablets can be catalogued, retrieved, and cross-referenced from within a large slanted dais.. To my knowledge, this device was one of the first western efforts to collect disparate and specific mathematical applications together in one body.]

  Built by Gaspard Schott, Rome, 1666. Based on John Napier’s multiplying rulers (aka Napier’s Bones) of the previous century, the Organum Mathematicum was “a large box in which are stored ten different sets of bone-like tablets for performing a variety of different tasks.” There were tablets used for:

  ARITHMETIC: a standard set of Napier’s bones together with addition and subtraction tables.

  GEOMETRY: tablets whose primary purpose was to solve problems encountered in survey work.

  FORTIFICATION: tablets which would aid the gentleman soldier in constructing military fortifications.

  CALENDAR: tablets used in determining the date of Easter and the dates of the other major Christian festivals.

  GNOMICS: tablets to calculate parameters to construct sun dials on all surfaces independent of their direction or inclination.

  SPHERICS: tablets which would help in calculating the movement of the sun, determine the times of sunrise and sunset for any given day or year, and other similar problems.

  PLANETARY MOVEMENTS: tablets to perform calculations to determine the motion of the planets and to cast horoscopes.

  EARTHWORKS: two sets of tablets dealing with the calculations involved in cut and fill problems for the construction of canals and civil engineering.

  MUSIC: tablets which would aid the novice in composing music and creating melodies.