If you were at primary school in the 80s

[isabellerossignol]

I've spent what seems like all morning printing off worksheets for my primary aged child. And I was suddenly struck by a vivid memory from primary school. Hand typed or handwritten worksheets that were printed on a machine, in the days before printers, with really poor quality paper and all the writing came out with a bluey/purple tinge.

I've had a Google and apparently it was called a Banda machine, and was used a lot in schools because it enabled relatively cheap printing. Does anyone else remember it?

The thing I remember most is that the printed sheets had a really strong, distinctive smell. If I could smell that now, I'd feel like I was 8 all over again.

Yes!!! I was thinking about this the last day I was in work, printing worksheets.
We so rarely had any worksheets in school, but I remember the craic of getting to turn the handle on the printing machine!

The day we got an actual photocopier, you'd swear the Queen was coming to visit!

Not sure I remember Banda machined but what were those printers that had tear off strips down the sides with lots of holes in them?

JasperRising Those were dot matrix printers. If we were really, really good we sometimes got to type our stories out on the BBC Micro and print it off on one of these. We would rip off the holey strips and then decorate round the edges of the printout with markers. Oh the absolute joy of being allowed to type out your story.

I worked in a secondary school around 2002 and duplicators were still very much in use. The ink was black rather than purple though and they were extremely fast. I think it was cheaper to use the photocopier for only a few copies but for a big run of worksheets or whatever you had to use the duplicators.

Looks like they are still a think. LINK

Who remembers the overhead projector with sheets of acetate that the teacher would write on with special markers?

SRA for English, SMP for maths, Come and Praise books for assembly. I remember the banda and getting purple ink on your fingers. Also Look and Read with Dark Towers and The Boy from Space

Our primary also had one BBC computer c.1984 that got wheeled around on a trolley

We had SMP cards in Y7 in Secondary school. I am amazed how we learnt any maths, they were shocking, and we were left to our own devices to choose which ones we wanted from the boxes in the store cupboard. Not quite sure what the teacher did in those lessons!

is that the same as a mimeograph? I seem to remember that's what we called it (I left school in 81)

I remember the banda machine, and the purple print we’d get from it. Often really faded print that was hard to read.

Usually though you had to copy stuff out into your jotters because they weren’t going to be wasting resources giving you a sheet that couldn’t be reused.

I loved watching How We Used To Live. Was a highlight of the week.

Ours was at the back of the TV room. Watching Dark Towers or The Boy From Space slightly high on fumes from the duplicator and the highly polished parquet floor was quite the experience.

Was SMP Scottish Primary maths? I remember working with those books in junior 4 and I'm not Scottish or ever went to school.in Scotland !when did they change from infants ,,juniors and seniors to year 1_etc?

@Onthehamsterwheel I was OBSESSED with How We Used To Live! Specially the WW2 series.

Back in the late 60s/early 70s it would have been a Gestetner machine.
Those were the v days.

I was still using one of these in the 90’s (modern copiers not an option due to sensitive nature of material being copied and modern copiers save the info on anything copied)

But yes the smell is very distinctive.

but I did have a flashback to the orange SMP maths books. omg yes!

YY to dictation and ohps too

Tipex was a big part of my life. haha! Me too

And when we did finally get computers, perforated paper on a roll with holes to anchor the paper dot matrix jobs - @JasperRising dot matrix

Does anyone remember having clock faces stamped into their work books to practice telling the time with? It was a blank clock face and then you would have to draw the hands to show the time. yep I remember that

School letters were often on little strips cut down to save paper. yep!

Come and Praise books for assembly. yes! Still remember words to favourite hymns even though not religious now

“when did they change from infants ,,juniors and seniors to year 1_etc?” I still can’t get my head around current school year descriptors. Reading threads about peoples dc and they put “they’re in year 9” when it’s nothing to do with school pisses me off. Just say their age ffs! I don’t know what age you mean when you give a school year plus their age changes during it! Plus I'm in Scotland so it works differently here

Yes I remember this.

Btw my children go to primary school in Italy which is like going back to the 1980s - blackboards, lots of dictation instead of photocopying, etc.

How we used to live led directly to me falling in love with history and featured children who would have been the same age as my grandparents were in real life. It was like a lightbulb moment when I realised that history wasn't kings and queens and battles, it was everything.

I used a Gestetner machine in the late 1980s. Ink below and a sort of grease proof paper stencil that you wrote or typed on. You had to be really careful with the matrix as no mistakes could be corrected. It made about 400 copies before it became illegible, so cheaper than photocopies at the time. But what a smell! I think the drum was lubricated with alcohol to dissolve the ink.

I loved going to the TV room so we could all sit cross-legged on the floor and stare up at the tv on the high trolley. Sometimes you’d get to experience the tv on the trolley from your classroom, but rarely.

And the single, massive BBC computer that would arrive on its trolley in your classroom sporadically. You’d be desperate to get a go on the truly dire game on offer. Always in groups though because there wasn’t enough time for individual goes.

I do remember in high school being taken down to the library by a geography teacher to witness the amazing new technology of The Internet. We marveled as the teacher tried (and failed) to load a website about the Hoover dam. But we couldn’t be allowed to use it ourselves. It was for demonstration purposes only.

Lots of 'How we used to live' episodes on YouTube

@JasperRising there were also Daisywheel printers too (they might have been a tad earlier).
Some of the printer paper had greenish horizontal lines on the reverse side (probably to stop you using both sides?) All of it made great drawing paper.
Can still be seen, and some games played with, at the Computer Museum in Cambridge where they have an 80s classroom exhibit! Other computing museums are available but I haven't been to see them for myself (yet).
Floppy disks are another product of this era, and loading the games stored upon them.

Yes! I thought it was called a photostat machine but maybe that was just my school.

My DSC find my tales of the olden day's fascinating and are horrified at the mention there was only one computer (a bbc one) in the whole school!

What about the paper with holes down the sides?

We called them Roneo machines and the middle of the o always fell out so the o‘S were just blue circles.

Yes to copydex, “how we used to live“ and the noise of the guillotine. Any takers for Singing Together, recorded off the radio on a huge reel to reel tape machine?

Ah yes, fond memories of the ‘duplicator’, the projector for assembly and the big telly on wheels for Dark Towers .

I left secondary school in 1993 and only remember getting access to the school ‘computer room’ (dusty classroom with a handful of enormous bbc computers) about three times to practice ‘word processing’ ie. typing in our ‘technology’ lessons. We weren’t allowed to print anything as it was too expensive and nobody could ever remember how to save things so you always lost your work