Mimeograph

As I searched my memory for early media and media tangents like the mimeographed grammar school lunch menus popped into my head. My geek nephew Caleb has start a museum in his living room for obsolete media machine rendered useless by the computer.  Piles of machine like manual typewriters, movie projector, battery powered portable record players ... even if he had an amphitheatre for a home he wouldn't have space for the universe of machines now junked by the incessant relentless computer.  He doesn't have a mimeograph machine nor can his desk top, lap top, iPod, iPad, or iPhone reproduce the smell of mimeograph paper. Not yet anyway.

As a kid at Central Grammar School I learned how to thread and run the movie projectors and such as part of the pre-nerd AV (Audio/Visual) Club. Sometimes I had to run movies for other classes. I had to have complete command of the serious media machines like slide projectors, tape recorders, overhead projectors, and record players. Important work somebody had to do. The real excitement came going to the nearby amusement park call Savin Rock and using the phonograph making little booth were one could record your voice on a record that would eject out of the machine all for you or to be sent of to a family member in Korea or some place else in the world.

I recently sold a 16 m.m. cartridge loaded movie camera at the flea market for a five dolla' bill. The wind-up camera has a variable speed multiple rotating lens, single frame animation and is practically indestructible. It is the same body as another camera I own from WWII that were mounted on the bombers use in that war.