From InfoWorld:
Why email hasn't killed the fax
We should have had a suitable alternative to the fax long ago, but email failedQuoteOf all of the computing or digital technologies commercially available in 1964, you probably won't find any of them in a Staples today -- except the fax machine. We don't use dot-matrix printers anymore or CRT monitors or televisions. We've largely migrated from landlines to cellphones, and even our landlines are digital in most places these days. The technologies from that era are all museum pieces now, with the glaring exception of this ancient document transmission system that continues on like a zombie, devouring forests of paper and screaming 14,400bps modem tones.
FULL ARTICLE HERE (http://markholtz.info/1ry)
There are plenty of reasons for this - one is them is fraud.
Quote from: SSOWorld on January 16, 2018, 05:16:46 AM
There are plenty of reasons for this - one is them is fraud.
Another reason is
confirmation -- the sender knows that the receiver has gotten the message; there's no "gee -- must have been a problem with my mailbox!" excuses. Now -- whether they respond..............
Quote from: sparker on January 16, 2018, 05:51:59 AM
Quote from: SSOWorld on January 16, 2018, 05:16:46 AM
There are plenty of reasons for this - one is them is fraud.
Another reason is confirmation -- the sender knows that the receiver has gotten the message; there's no "gee -- must have been a problem with my mailbox!" excuses. Now -- whether they respond..............
Sadly, even that is false. I have a bank that requires us to fax them info on a daily basis, and occasionally I'll receive an email stating "Please remember to fax over...". When I respond saying I have a confirmation showing it went at XX:YY:ZZ, they come back with "Nope, we don't have it". Either I engage in a standoff where I won't fax it again and they won't process what we need done, or I simply refax it.
Of course, the OP's quoted paragraph screams of exaggeration. Most people have the modem tones turned off. Most companies get their incoming faxes on a networked computer program. It's doubtful you found many computer monitors in Staples in 1964...same with faxes. And like the early days of computer monitors, the early days of fax machines have been long replaced by much smaller, more efficient printers that handle multiple functions, including faxing.
I had a fax line in my office for a little while, since a vendor I was dealing with liked things faxed. Then I realized it was a stupid expense and cancelled the line. Now, when a fax is requested, I let them know I don't have a fax machine and offer to email a scan. If they insist on doing a fax I just don't do business with them.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on January 16, 2018, 06:23:16 AM
Quote from: sparker on January 16, 2018, 05:51:59 AM
Quote from: SSOWorld on January 16, 2018, 05:16:46 AM
There are plenty of reasons for this - one is them is fraud.
Another reason is confirmation -- the sender knows that the receiver has gotten the message; there's no "gee -- must have been a problem with my mailbox!" excuses. Now -- whether they respond..............
Sadly, even that is false. I have a bank that requires us to fax them info on a daily basis, and occasionally I'll receive an email stating "Please remember to fax over...". When I respond saying I have a confirmation showing it went at XX:YY:ZZ, they come back with "Nope, we don't have it". Either I engage in a standoff where I won't fax it again and they won't process what we need done, or I simply refax it.
Yep, I've encountered that too, and I hardly ever send or receive faxes–so rarely, in fact, that I have to be reminded how to do it every single time. I can only imagine how often that happens to people who fax stuff every day.
Quote from: ZLoth on January 16, 2018, 04:10:42 AM
Quote
We don't use ... CRT monitors or televisions.
Our family has two TV sets, and both of them are CRT. I've never owned a flat screen TV.
Judges' chambers only accepted faxes (never emails, on occasion not even hand-delivered paper copies) of courtesy copies of briefs and letters and such as recently as 2011, and it's probably the case today. I suspect that saves a clerk the work of having to monitor an email inbox and print copies of everything that comes in for the judge. Occasionally they would have a limit on the number of pages that could be accepted by fax, no 100-page faxes.
I know some people who prefer faxes either because they're technically inept when it comes to scanning and e-mailing documents or because they cheaped out and bought crappy scanners that make it a hassle to do this. In particular, it seems like the people who get the multifunction printers are more likely to prefer faxing.
Also, there are some people, such as Amish, that have no email. A minority, sure, but they do exist, and they have to do business just like everyone else.
Quote from: webny99 on January 19, 2018, 10:11:45 AM
Also, there are some people, such as Amish, that have no email. A minority, sure, but they do exist, and they have to do business just like everyone else.
There are lots of businesses in Amish country that help them with this.
Quote from: 1995hoo on January 19, 2018, 09:57:21 AM
I know some people who prefer faxes either because they're technically inept when it comes to scanning and e-mailing documents or because they cheaped out and bought crappy scanners that make it a hassle to do this. In particular, it seems like the people who get the multifunction printers are more likely to prefer faxing.
I feel like I'm more technically inept with faxing than scanning, and I'm not too young to have spent many years having to send faxes.
Quote from: webny99 on January 19, 2018, 10:11:45 AM
Also, there are some people, such as Amish, that have no email. A minority, sure, but they do exist, and they have to do business just like everyone else.
I'll beg to differ on that. There are more than a few Amish who own smartphones, believe it or not. Oddly enough, there are communities that allow cell phones, but not land line phones. The charging station is outside though. Here's a primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_life_in_the_modern_world
(https://positek.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/dragnetfax.png)
Quote from: Brandon on January 19, 2018, 10:50:37 AM
Quote from: webny99 on January 19, 2018, 10:11:45 AM
Also, there are some people, such as Amish, that have no email. A minority, sure, but they do exist, and they have to do business just like everyone else.
I'll beg to differ on that. There are more than a few Amish who own smartphones, believe it or not. Oddly enough, there are communities that allow cell phones, but not land line phones. The charging station is outside though. Here's a primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_life_in_the_modern_world
Cell phones does not equal email. And there still are some that don't, even if there are some that do.
Quote from: US71 on January 19, 2018, 11:38:57 AM
(https://positek.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/dragnetfax.png)
Except Joe Friday never said "just the facts, ma'am," just like Captain Kirk never said "beam me up, Scotty."
Quote from: abefroman329 on January 19, 2018, 12:29:29 PM
Except Joe Friday never said "just the facts, ma'am,"
But Bruce Willis DID
As far as Fax machines go, seems all we ever got at work were for "YOU JUST WON A FREE VACATION" scams.
Quote from: inkyatari on January 19, 2018, 12:45:35 PM
Quote from: abefroman329 on January 19, 2018, 12:29:29 PM
Except Joe Friday never said "just the facts, ma'am,"
But Bruce Willis DID
As far as Fax machines go, seems all we ever got at work were for "YOU JUST WON A FREE VACATION" scams.
Bruce Willis said "Just the fax, ma'am."
From googling fax, it seems like a weird combo of calling and mail.
Quote from: abefroman329 on January 19, 2018, 12:29:29 PM
Except Joe Friday never said "just the facts, ma'am," just like Captain Kirk never said "beam me up, Scotty."
I guess that means he never went to Whole Foods and asked for "just the flax" ? :bigass:
We receive faxes everyday at my railroad. We are required by federal law to have, in our possession onboard our train, a list of all cars in our train that carry hazardous materials and their placement in the train. The law specifies a paper list...not a list on any electronic device. So we get all of this information from our customer service department via a fax.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on January 19, 2018, 04:59:28 PM
From googling fax,
Wow. Just..... wow. You didn't know what a fax is? Mind blown.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on January 19, 2018, 04:59:28 PM
it seems like a weird combo of calling and mail.
That's basically what e-mail and text messaging are, right?
Except, with a fax, you make a copy of something and it spits out from someone else's copier on the other side of the country.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on January 19, 2018, 04:59:28 PM
From googling fax, it seems like a weird combo of calling and mail.
You just made me feel old. I can remember the day when people sent NEFW broadcast faxes much like we get emails of that type today.
I used to have a FAX machine, and used my landline specifically for it. Now with encrypted PDF's, they've pretty much become passe for me. Plus, there are plenty of plug-in's for Microsoft Office where a FAX can be received in digital form, and printed out from a link in an email message. i very rarely use a scanner anymore either; with email, cameras and voice to text features, scanners have kind of become outdated as well.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on January 19, 2018, 04:59:28 PM
From googling fax, it seems like a weird combo of calling and mail.
Wanna know the sound?
When I worked for Holiday Inn, we had to fax the Night Audit report to the owner's office. We'd occasionally receive reservations via fax, as well as corporate announcements. Also lots of junk.
HI Corporate faxed all the hotels on 9/11 advising not to bill No Shows for the next two weeks.
For a time in the 1970s, my mom's office had some sort of telecopier machine that I presume was the predecessor of the modern fax machine. You actually put the receiver of a telephone into a cradle on the machine to make it work. I remember that it took an agonizingly long time for the photocopy to spit out, and the ink smelled horrible.
The first fax machine we had at my workplace in the early 1990s used rolls of thermal paper instead of plain paper.
We still deal with faxes here, alot of what we do on the law enforcement side of dispatch requires printed signatures (NCIC entries, judges orders things like that). Most agencies still use fax to send that information to other agencies.
For example, lets say the PD in your area arrested someone from my area on an NCIC hit for a felony warrant. I would have to fax that PD a copy of the original warrant so that they can a)hold the suspect in their jail and b) start the extradition process so that we can come get them. Some other states might need a certain document signed by our judge/magistrate so that their judge/magistrate/justice of the peace (etc) can do what they need to do to set bond/hold with no bond (etc). All that still has to be done by fax because alot of places have no way of scanning the document in to be emailed.
I think a lot of apparently obsolescent technologies like fax persist not just because of institutional factors like legal requirements that specify hardcopy, but also because the process of realigning workflows to go completely paperless is seen as fraught with downside risk.
For example, I am a member of a community board that meets monthly and we have the option of receiving our agenda packets via email or snail mail. I choose email, because it is much easier for me to handle PDFs than paper. Every single thing we get in our packets is originally produced in Microsoft Office applications (agendas, meeting minutes, reports, briefing documents, etc. in Word; account statements and financial summaries in Excel). Yet my PDF packets are always raster scans of paper printouts, never printouts directly to PDF via PostScript rendering in Acrobat Distiller. Why is this? I suspect it is partly because commercial scanners produce PDFs by default while there is a licensing cost for a pre-press PDF utility like Distiller that works with the standard commercial office packages and whose output quality matches that of a laser printer. (The PDFWriter utility built into Word yields inferior results.)
Quote from: jp the roadgeek on January 19, 2018, 06:59:43 PM
i very rarely use a scanner anymore either; with email, cameras and voice to text features, scanners have kind of become outdated as well.
I disagree with the second part of that. A cell phone photo can't really capture an image as well as most scanners can. You have to worry about things like lighting, camera angle, noise, etc. Getting a photo of a printed document up to the same quality as a scanned image takes more work in an image editor than I care to do.
The only real advantages a camera (either standalone digital or built into a smartphone) has are speed of image acquisition for a single page and the ability to deal with odd sizes such as thermal paper strips of varying length. Even with a proper copy-stand setup, glossy stock will often defeat cameras.
I have a scan-and-throw policy that applies to most incoming paper. Thermal paper receipts typically get photographed with a digital camera (usually not a smartphone camera because even the best are not up to the quality and fidelity of a dedicated digital point-and-shoot, and the camera in my Droid Turbo is pretty bad) and added to a shred pile. Letter-size paper usually gets run through the sheet-fed scanner and also added to the shred pile. I keep a 12-year-old Windows XP laptop specifically to run the scanner because I have found most image acquisition software to be far from robust and I don't want any of it on my primary computer.
No images or scanned documents are kept permanently on any device that is taken out of the house. The digital camera, which is not wifi-enabled, has photos transferred from its SDHC card every so often, including immediately before I take it on a long-distance trip. The smartphone has its image folders emptied onto my primary computer every so often over the home LAN.
To prevent identity theft, I shred instead of simply discarding anything that might have even titivated SSNs or credit card numbers. I am old enough to have had my SSN issued out of a statewide pool instead of the national pool (indeed, if your SSN comes out of the national pool, you are still too young even for middle school), which means the full SSN is guessable just from the last four digits. I count myself lucky not to have had to hang official paper during the years when SSNs were routinely left untitivated on documents that are still available unredacted to the general public.
Quote from: J N Winkler on January 20, 2018, 01:11:51 AM
I think a lot of apparently obsolescent technologies like fax persist not just because of institutional factors like legal requirements that specify hardcopy, but also because the process of realigning workflows to go completely paperless is seen as fraught with downside risk.
Or simply because of the need to remain "backwards compatible" with other organizations that have not gone paperless.
When we were operating a utility incentive program, we would have loved nothing more than to accept applications digitally only, as digitally was how we stored all of the documents and it would have made our lives easier. But our contract stipulated that we had to accept applications submitted by mail or by fax, and so we did... and indeed, both of these were the method of choice of some applicants. Whenever someone submitted something by mail or fax, we would scan and upload the documents, and then shred the hard copies since we had no need or use for them.
Quote from: Paul VeneziaSecond, people still believe that they need to physically sign documents that have been sent to them digitally, then redigitize them. This is what leads to people printing out 12 pages of a PDF, signing the last page, then faxing the whole thing somewhere.
To be fair, digitally signing a document in a verifiable way is legitimately more difficult to do than printing it out and signing it the old-fashioned way. I can make a digital signature, put it on a PDF, and then email it to someone easily enough. But unless I get a digital ID from a recognized certificate authority (this costs money), the message "one or more signatures could not be verified" will pop up when the document is viewed, because without that official certificate Acrobat has no way of knowing whether I was the one who actually created the signature.
And let's be real here, how many people know what a certificate authority is or have any understanding of the concept behind them? This is not an aspect of computing that has been made accessible to the common man.
Hard to believe but most companies (including cell phone companies ironically) will only accept legal process paperwork via fax. What's really annoying is that I know most of them have fax servers on the other end of the line forwarding what I sent via e-mail!
Quote from: J N Winkler on January 20, 2018, 11:24:06 AM
The only real advantages a camera (either standalone digital or built into a smartphone) has are speed of image acquisition for a single page and the ability to deal with odd sizes such as thermal paper strips of varying length. Even with a proper copy-stand setup, glossy stock will often defeat cameras.
I have a scan-and-throw policy that applies to most incoming paper. Thermal paper receipts typically get photographed with a digital camera (usually not a smartphone camera because even the best are not up to the quality and fidelity of a dedicated digital point-and-shoot, and the camera in my Droid Turbo is pretty bad) and added to a shred pile. Letter-size paper usually gets run through the sheet-fed scanner and also added to the shred pile. I keep a 12-year-old Windows XP laptop specifically to run the scanner because I have found most image acquisition software to be far from robust and I don't want any of it on my primary computer.
Thermal paper receipts is 90% of what I do my scanning on, as part of the accounting for my small business. I find the best way of dealing with them is to use a flatbed scanner and set the scanner mode to black/white only, not even grayscale (the "Lineart" option in xsane). This leverages the benefits of PNG run-length encoding in reducing image size, while keeping the desired text legible and filtering out things like watermarks that aren't necessary for the purposes of recording the particulars of a transaction.
The aforementioned xsane is what I do my scanning in, and it is fairly robust, although the SANE API that it runs on is only available on Linux (xsane is available for Windows, but can only interface with SANE on a Linux computer that a scanner is actually connected to). A key benefit of xsane is that it can control any scanner that SANE can interface with, so it is not tied to any particular device, as much Windows scanning software is.
Quote from: hbelkins on January 19, 2018, 10:39:47 PM
For a time in the 1970s, my mom's office had some sort of telecopier machine that I presume was the predecessor of the modern fax machine. You actually put the receiver of a telephone into a cradle on the machine to make it work. I remember that it took an agonizingly long time for the photocopy to spit out, and the ink smelled horrible.
The first fax machine we had at my workplace in the early 1990s used rolls of thermal paper instead of plain paper.
That's how the modem seen in WarGames worked, too.
Quote from: US71 on January 19, 2018, 05:03:02 PM
Quote from: abefroman329 on January 19, 2018, 12:29:29 PM
Except Joe Friday never said "just the facts, ma'am," just like Captain Kirk never said "beam me up, Scotty."
I guess that means he never went to Whole Foods and asked for "just the flax" ? :bigass:
Nope. Never went to a music store and asked for "just the sax," either.
Quote from: hbelkins on January 19, 2018, 10:39:47 PM
For a time in the 1970s, my mom's office had some sort of telecopier machine that I presume was the predecessor of the modern fax machine. You actually put the receiver of a telephone into a cradle on the machine to make it work. I remember that it took an agonizingly long time for the photocopy to spit out, and the ink smelled horrible.
The first fax machine we had at my workplace in the early 1990s used rolls of thermal paper instead of plain paper.
The 1970s machine was probably an early fax machine. Early adopters had them by the late 1960s. Putting the phone handset into a cradle was a phone company rule. No electrical connection between devices the phone company owned and any device the customer had. The phone company reason was, what if the customer's device isn't working properly? It might break the Holy AT&T Network. Early modems for computer communication also used handsets in a cradle for the same reason.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on January 19, 2018, 04:59:28 PM
From googling fax, it seems like a weird combo of calling and mail.
I know you're only a few years younger than me, but I am in disbelief right now. Utter and total :wow:
At one time, there was a way to fax via your computer. It's been a while since I used it (only a couple times) so I don't know if it's still used.
Quote from: US71 on January 23, 2018, 10:44:12 AMAt one time, there was a way to fax via your computer. It's been a while since I used it (only a couple times) so I don't know if it's still used.
My current computer dates from 2011 and it still has a modem. If the device has a modem, then it can be used for faxing with the appropriate software. I just don't know if computers sold today have modems.
Quote from: hbelkins on January 19, 2018, 10:39:47 PM
For a time in the 1970s, my mom's office had some sort of telecopier machine that I presume was the predecessor of the modern fax machine. You actually put the receiver of a telephone into a cradle on the machine to make it work. I remember that it took an agonizingly long time for the photocopy to spit out, and the ink smelled horrible.
The first fax machine we had at my workplace in the early 1990s used rolls of thermal paper instead of plain paper.
I find it mildly amusing/interesting that some people still use the word "telecopier" to refer to a fax machine. I've often seen letterhead that will give someone's address and then have lines beginning "Telephone:" and "Telecopier:" I assume this is typically a case of "that's how we've always referred to it." Sometimes makes me wonder whether those people, if they worked in the electronics industry, would refer to a compact disc's sampling rate as "44.1 kilocycles" instead of "kilohertz."
Then you have one older guy I briefly worked with about 24 years ago who spelled it "facs," as in, "Please facs this document to 202-555-1212." I suppose that's sort of short for "facsimile," but it makes me think of the kids I knew back in first grade who sounded out the word "once" when doing creative writing assignments and so began their stories with "ones upon a time."
This next point is not directly on-topic but might be semi-related: Anyone else remember the old mimeograph machines? My grammar-school teachers usually called them "ditto machines." You had to put the initial copy on some sort of special paper and then put it in this thing and turn a crank to make the copies, which came out in a somewhat splotchy purple color. Smelled funny, too. My first grammar school (closed in 1982) had at least one of those machines in the library's office, and I don't think they had any photocopiers because it was a Big Deal when the public library first got coin-operated photocopiers patrons could use.
Quote from: J N Winkler on January 23, 2018, 10:49:36 AM
Quote from: US71 on January 23, 2018, 10:44:12 AMAt one time, there was a way to fax via your computer. It's been a while since I used it (only a couple times) so I don't know if it's still used.
My current computer dates from 2011 and it still has a modem. If the device has a modem, then it can be used for faxing with the appropriate software. I just don't know if computers sold today have modems.
Presumably even without a conventional modem you could probably fax from your PC using an e-fax service via VOIP.
Quote from: US71 on January 23, 2018, 10:44:12 AM
At one time, there was a way to fax via your computer. It's been a while since I used it (only a couple times) so I don't know if it's still used.
There's definitely an add-on for MS Outlook. I use one called Genifax, that allows emails to be faxed. Up until a few years ago, we had some media outlets that did not use email and had to get press releases by fax.
Quote from: 1995hoo on January 23, 2018, 10:52:48 AM
This next point is not directly on-topic but might be semi-related: Anyone else remember the old mimeograph machines? My grammar-school teachers usually called them "ditto machines." You had to put the initial copy on some sort of special paper and then put it in this thing and turn a crank to make the copies, which came out in a somewhat splotchy purple color. Smelled funny, too. My first grammar school (closed in 1982) had at least one of those machines in the library's office, and I don't think they had any photocopiers because it was a Big Deal when the public library first got coin-operated photocopiers patrons could use.
I remember the old mimeographs, and working with the "ditto masters" used to create the copies. The "splotchy purple" ink sometimes got on my hands.
Growing up in military areas (my father was a Marine), I was more familiar with stencils. Those were mainly used to mark fabric items such as duffel bags, weren't really a precursor to photocopies.
Quote from: 1995hoo on January 23, 2018, 10:52:48 AMThis next point is not directly on-topic but might be semi-related: Anyone else remember the old mimeograph machines? My grammar-school teachers usually called them "ditto machines." You had to put the initial copy on some sort of special paper and then put it in this thing and turn a crank to make the copies, which came out in a somewhat splotchy purple color. Smelled funny, too. My first grammar school (closed in 1982) had at least one of those machines in the library's office, and I don't think they had any photocopiers because it was a Big Deal when the public library first got coin-operated photocopiers patrons could use.
I remember mimeograph machines, down to the purple ink and the special duplicate masters, and I think the Wichita public schools kept theirs in use a few years beyond 1982. I don't remember an abrupt transition from mimeograph to xerographic reproduction but I am pretty sure we were getting photocopied worksheets by 1986, when I finished elementary school.
Our public libraries have photocopiers, but I am not sure they were actually the first to make them available as a community resource. They were in Dillons supermarkets locally by the late 1980's/early 1990's.
I was just on a phone call and while I was waiting for the guy to ring me, I looked up mimeograph machines online. It seems the "ditto machine" is a specific type of mimeograph machine and is sometimes called a "spirit duplicator" (per Wikipedia) because they use an alcohol-based solvent that is the source of the aroma. The machine shown in the Wikipedia article looks smaller than the one I remember, though that could also easily be because a little kid usually sees things as bigger than they are.
Quote from: 1995hoo on January 23, 2018, 12:05:38 PM
I was just on a phone call and while I was waiting for the guy to ring me, I looked up mimeograph machines online. It seems the "ditto machine" is a specific type of mimeograph machine and is sometimes called a "spirit duplicator" (per Wikipedia) because they use an alcohol-based solvent that is the source of the aroma. The machine shown in the Wikipedia article looks smaller than the one I remember, though that could also easily be because a little kid usually sees things as bigger than they are.
OMG...the ditto machine! What a memory of a phrase from elementary school!
Ours was in the library, off to the side, for the teachers to copy stuff.
Incredible to think that the everyday copy (Xerox) machines we have are relatively recent everyday-use machines. And how cheap they are compared to 30, 40 years ago.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on January 23, 2018, 12:11:09 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on January 23, 2018, 12:05:38 PM
I was just on a phone call and while I was waiting for the guy to ring me, I looked up mimeograph machines online. It seems the "ditto machine" is a specific type of mimeograph machine and is sometimes called a "spirit duplicator" (per Wikipedia) because they use an alcohol-based solvent that is the source of the aroma. The machine shown in the Wikipedia article looks smaller than the one I remember, though that could also easily be because a little kid usually sees things as bigger than they are.
OMG...the ditto machine! What a memory of a phrase from elementary school!
Ours was in the library, off to the side, for the teachers to copy stuff.
Incredible to think that the everyday copy (Xerox) machines we have are relatively recent everyday-use machines. And how cheap they are compared to 30, 40 years ago.
We used a ditto machine to produce a newsletter for the church college group. It was a wax sheet and if you made a mistake, you couldn't go back and correct it.
There were two types of small duplicating machines. To keep them straight:
The Spirit Duplicator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator) (brand name Ditto™) is the one with purple ink and a funny smell.
The master was a two-part paper form with purple gunk on one of the inner surfaces. By writing or typing on the blank sheet, the gunk would be transferred onto that back of it. That became, in effect, the printing plate, and the purple was its lifetime supply of ink. The Ditto™ machine then used a solvent to transfer the printing to the output papers.
Other colors were available, but purple produced the most copies before the master faded away. Textbook publishers sometimes sold pre-made master worksheets to go along with their books.
The Stencil Duplicator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph) (genericized trademark Mimeograph) used a special type of waxed paper called a stencil.
A typewriter was used to "cut a stencil" . This punched holes in the wax, not the paper – the stencil itself was the wax; the porous paper was just to hold the wax together. The Mimeograph machine would then force ink through the stencil onto the output papers.
Typewriters of the day often had a two-color ribbon (black and red) with a three-position ribbon switch (one labeled "stencil" , meaning no ribbon). Compared to spirit, stencil produced more copies with more readable printing, but was more expensive.
Yes, spirit duplicators stuck around longer than the stencil duplicators.
In 2014 when my daughter's school moved to a different building, they cleaned out lots of handouts left behind by previous teachers. Many of them were so old they were done by ditto machines in the purple ink and we had to explain the process to the kids for whom it was only slightly newer than clay tablets.
For a while modems became so cheap that is cheaper and easier to incorporate them into all the motherboards. That was late 1990s to about 2010, I think. But after that so few people were using them, they were mostly dropped from motherboards. Still, a few people use modems, at least as a backup in case wifi goes down or they're stuck someplace that doesn't have internet, so they're still available.
Quote from: kkt on January 23, 2018, 03:16:37 PM
For a while modems...
Time to explain to Roadgeekteen what a modem is.
A modem as a backup option would be useless to me, I don't have a landline.
Quote from: GenExpwy on January 23, 2018, 01:34:34 PM
There were two types of small duplicating machines. To keep them straight:
The Spirit Duplicator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator) (brand name Ditto™) is the one with purple ink and a funny smell.
The master was a two-part paper form with purple gunk on one of the inner surfaces. By writing or typing on the blank sheet, the gunk would be transferred onto that back of it. That became, in effect, the printing plate, and the purple was its lifetime supply of ink. The Ditto™ machine then used a solvent to transfer the printing to the output papers.
Other colors were available, but purple produced the most copies before the master faded away. Textbook publishers sometimes sold pre-made master worksheets to go along with their books.
....
I definitely recall seeing those types of worksheets at least through third or fourth grade (don't really recall after that). I do recall being confused when one teacher handed out a "ditto" that was in black and white (presumably made on a photocopier and she just used the old terminology) because I thought of (still do, actually) "dittos" as having purple text and graphics.
We had one teacher who had us make our own dittos one day, which is part of the reason why I remember the machine (that, plus my mom volunteered in the school library for a year or two).
Quote from: jeffandnicole on January 23, 2018, 03:20:53 PM
Quote from: kkt on January 23, 2018, 03:16:37 PM
For a while modems...
Time to explain to Roadgeekteen what a modem is.
Actually, he's not been very active recently. We got time :D
FWIW, I knew what a fax was well before I knew what a modem was.