{"id":47743,"date":"2020-07-19T07:27:19","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T12:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=47743"},"modified":"2020-07-19T07:53:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T12:53:14","slug":"more-obsolete-communications-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=47743","title":{"rendered":"More obsolete communications technology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following up on our discussion of faxes and pdfs (\"<a href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=47651\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Obsolete communications technology<\/a>\", 7\/13\/2020), an even older textual transmission method is featured in the punch line of today's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/doonesbury\/strip\/archive\/2020\/7\/19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Doonesbury<\/a>:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/DoonesburyMimeo.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/DoonesburyMimeo.png\" width=\"490\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I think that Boopsie is confusing mimeographs with another obsolete printing method, the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spirit_duplicator\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">spirit duplicator<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chattanoogan.com\/2006\/7\/27\/89955\/Remembering-the-Ditto-and-Mimeograph.aspx#:~:text=The%20output%20of%20the%20ditto%20machine%20had%20a%20special%20aroma.&amp;text=The%20smell%20came%20from%20the,for%20students%20to%20take%20home.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ditto machine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The purple pages produced by ditto machines, along with the U.S. Mail, were the 1960s equivalent of <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">arXiv.org<\/a>, at least <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linguisticsociety.org\/sites\/default\/files\/241-268.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">in the field of linguistics<\/a>. I still have a few boxes of fading purple documents somewhere, though alas not the box from George Lakoff that saved my life in Vietnam (a story for another time&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following up on our discussion of faxes and pdfs (\"Obsolete communications technology\", 7\/13\/2020), an even older textual transmission method is featured in the punch line of today's Doonesbury:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-changing-times","category-linguistics-in-the-funny-papers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47743"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47747,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47743\/revisions\/47747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}