The last of the Baby Boomers and the first of the Gen Xers will be the last generation to remember the world before the internet, or so I heard at a lecture by Scott Thomas Anderson at CWC Tri-Valley Writers September meeting. That’s a bit of a shock, but there’s a bigger demarcation line in my opinion. I remember the world before the photocopier.
My high-school business classes included learning how to type with carbons, both single and multiple. I struggled to master the intricacies of mimeograph machines and thermofaxes. Research for term papers meant spending hours copying out texts I wished to cite, and tracing diagrams or drawings from reference books. Sharing my work with friends meant reading it out loud to them, or letting them borrow my one typed copy.
The photocopier became standard office equipment when I was in college, but even then there were only a few machines available regardless of the size of the institution. I remember trudging across the campus to the business center to make copies of tests for my professors, and counted myself lucky because at least I didn’t have to deal with smelly chemicals and persnickety mimeographs. “Cut and paste” meant literally cutting out paragraphs and taping them together when someone wanted a change in a report, then covering the edge of the tape with a thin line of White-Out or Liquid Paper, copying the new page and assembling the report again. I was thrilled, because at least I didn’t have to retype entire pages to make the edits.
I knew we had achieved a higher level of civilization when small, affordable machines became available for home use. The internet is useful in its way, but the tool that changed my life was the photocopier.
I used those mimeograph machines in the early 1970s when I worked at an insurance company. Once a week, I wrote a newsletter for the salesmen. Yes, men. The women worked in the office, and only men sold the insurance. I can still smell the ink that permeated the little closet of a workroom when I cranked the lever to produce multiple copies. Six years after leaving the insurance job, copiers became my best friend when I became an accountant as a CPA, otherwise known as cut and paste artist.