[CrazyIvan]

I used to work on office equipment and I think you are getting mimeo and spirit duplicators confused. The mimeo used conventional ink and a wax and fiber stencil. The spirit duplicator used solvent to pass purple dye from a master to paper, hence the smell.

[green pastures]

Though technically correct, most folks referred to the spirit duplicator as a mimeograph. At least by the time I was regularly reproducing college class handouts as part of my student job in the early 8o’s, everyone in the office called it the mimeograph. Thankfully by then we didn’t have to hand crank, but had an automatic version with a counter that *usually* worked.

On the receiving end, I always preferred true mimeographs because you’d get more legible copies.

These days it would have to be called something else— spirit duplicator wouldn’t be PC for some...