How did they smell? The warm, waxy, purple ink had a special smell. I can't quite bring it to mind, and that bothers me. Wasn't it a little bit sweet?
That machine was always called the mimeograph, but apparently it wasn't one. It seems that no particular smell attached to mimeographic technology. The old name must have carried over in common use. The warm machine with the rotating drum must have been what I have just learned is called a spirit duplicator. I can only imagine how that name would have worked on my younger imagination.
I remember being given the special treat of drawing on my own two-ply master, allowed the pleasure of seeing my thicket of curlicues and dragons and dog-headed figures reproduced -- even if only once -- in fuzzy aniline purple. Maybe, even in ignorance of the machine's proper name, I sensed that they were intangibly magnified with every turn of the spirit drum.
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I think I knew those purple copies as dittos, but I could be mistaken. There's a company that still stocks supplies for the spirit duplicator, or did as of a few months ago. I think they're in New Jersey.
Laminating machines do still exist. I've even seen a do-it-yourself kit where you seal the sheets of plastic together with a clothes iron.
... and then there were the very faint smells of pencil sharpeners ... and of plasticene ... and wax crayons
I always liked the smell of the lead more than the smell of the new-sharpened wood. I'm not sure why.
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