For some reason, the subject line made me think of Ditto copiers. This is, after all, a vintage forum.

Dittos were a type of copier where you typed (and you could probably write) onto special forms, wrapped that form around a drum, then turned a crank that transfered the image from the special form onto paper. Anyways, I had one of those as a child. Though I never did get it working, probably because my parents didn't want me to mess around with copious amounts of ink.