Life, 1918-06-06 · page 40 of 40
Life — June 6, 1918 — page 40: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **product advertisement**, not political satire. It promotes the "Mimeoscope," an attachment for mimeograph machines made by A.B. Dick Company (Chicago and New York). The image shows a woman operating a mimeograph machine. The ad emphasizes the device's practical business benefits: quickly producing multiple copies of designs, diagrams, and typed content for sales letters and factory communications—cheaper and more effective than blueprints. The "Caution" section is notably defensive, warning users that the Mimeoscope only works properly with A.B. Dick's own supplies; using other materials voids the company's responsibility for quality. This suggests competitive pressure in the copying-equipment market and concerns about customers substituting cheaper third-party supplies. The tone is straightforward industrial marketing, typical of early-20th-century business magazine advertising.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
She draws it on a dark-blue stencil—and quickly Mimeo- graphs it. A thousand tracings of a design or diagram ready within a few minutes! Think what that means. Pictures! What an opportunity to put punch into your sales letters, also organization and factory communications! Lots cheaper than blue-prints—and more effective. Type- writing, on the same sheet. The Mimeoscope makes the Mimeograph immensely more useful—and important. Let us show you how it will help you. Get booklet ‘“W” today. A. B. Dick Company, Chicago—and New York. Caution: The Mimeograph, and our supplies for it, are made to work together. Upset that relationship, the work suffers, valuable time and materials are lost, and our responsibility for quality and output ceases, i Te i