Blast from the past

Found while looking for a photo I took of a golden silk spider (nephila clavipes) … this photo of my old waxer. Anybody else remember these? You dropped a stick of wax into the well of the waxer (the well is stoppered by that red rectangle you see), plugged it in, waited for the waxer to heat up — this last bit of patience being necessary to the well-being of your waxer. Then, applying wax in much the same way we apply packing tape to a carton, roll on the wax to the back of whatever you wanted to apply to your … paste-up, or mechanical.

I took this photo in 2004, just before dumping it in the garbage.

I haven’t missed it at all.

3 Replies to “Blast from the past”

  1. Well, this seems to be my summer for a stroll down memory lane. I do remember those from working on my high school paper, 20 years ago. I also remember cropping photos with a blue pencil and writing the enlargement percentages after using my little wheel… I think I’ll go listen to my Fixx CD now, or better yet, I’ll dig out my Duran Duran tapes. 😉 –LaRinda

  2. Ah ha. I sure do remember these… fondly… from my first job. I started working just before the Mac came out, and I’m kind of glad I had a few years of paste-up before the computer came along. Kind of messy, tho!

  3. Isn’t the virtual paste-up so much nicer? In a way. No white-out on the paste-up edges to hide them from the the stat camera. And everything is so reversible on a computer. You don’t get the nice variety of smells, which I kind of miss … even though typesetting baths, for instance, were not exactly environmentally friendly.

Comments are closed.