Today, your club newsletter is a PDF or web page. Back in the 1960’s, we made them using a Gestetner. It took hours to produce and print.
Over the years, many of us have belonged to clubs. A few of us volunteered to help publish the club newsletter. You might have some memories of such activities.
My first association membership was the Canadian International DX Club, or CIDX. I joined shortly after CIDX was formed by some Winnipeg radio listeners in 1962. The CIDX Messenger started as a single page newsletter in August of that year, quickly expanding to 20-30 pages in short order.
Our membership meetings were held once a month, on Monday evenings, at St. Matthews’ Anglican Church on Maryland Street in downtown Winnipeg. Afterwards, we would walk a short block to Harman’s Drugs on Portage Avenue for a snack at the lunch counter. Good memories.
My friend and neighbor Lorne Jennings became CIDX President in 1966, a role he continued for fifteen years. Shortly after I joined, Lorne convinced me help edit and publish the Messenger.
Back in those days, publishing a newsletter was hard work. No computers, word processors or laser printers. Just the mechanical mimeograph machine made by Gestetner.
Gestetner – Ink, Stencils and a Crank
Our Gestetner worked by pushing ink through a stencil onto paper. Each page required a stencil, which would last for 40-50 pages. Stencils were cut on a mechanical typewriter with its ribbon removed. With a hard strike, my typewriter keys would remove the wax cover of the stencil forming each letter. If I made a mistake, I could fix it with nail lacquer and typing the correct letter over top.
In the photo above, you can see a typical 1960’s Gestetner machine on the left, and a cut stencil on the right. You can get a sense of how the Gestetner and similar mimeograph machines worked in this video.
Plus, the ink really smelled bad!
Ah, good memories, good times! My club bulletin production duties began in the early desktop publishing era, creating master copies with printouts from a dot matrix printer (“BZZzzt! BZZzzt! BZZzzt!”–remember that melodious sound, John?). My computer at the time was an Atari ST, a quite capable alternative to the early Mac computers. I would take the final printout to a firm like Kinkos for photocopying, and then mailing. The bulletins I produced this way were from the Cascade Mountain DX Club, and later the DX/Northwest bulletin, both based in the Seattle vicinity.
Hi Guy. Merry Christmas! I think working on a club newsletter was a right of passage for most of us.