Life, 1919-03-20 · page 6 of 44
Life — March 20, 1919 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily an **advertisement for the Mimeograph machine**, not political satire. The page occupies Life magazine's space 442 and promotes the A.B. Dick Company's copying device. The illustration shows a **parrot** mimicking human speech, which serves as a visual pun: the ad cleverly titles itself "The mimic!" to draw a parallel between parrots' imitative abilities and the mimeograph's capacity to reproduce documents. The advertisement emphasizes the machine's practical business value—it could make 5,000 copies per hour of "typewritten letters, forms, drawings, maps." The copy stresses cost savings for "business enterprises, governments, armies, navies and educational institutions." This represents **early 20th-century advertising strategy**: using clever wordplay and illustration to make office equipment seem essential and innovative to potential customers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The mimic! It’s a new sort of parrot-ssm that the Mimeo- graph has brought into the world. At the great speed of five thou- sand copies an hour it exactly reproduces typewritten letters, forms, drawings, maps and the like. Throughout civilization it is used by business enterprises, governments, armies, navies and educational institutions as a quick means of savinga great deal of timeand money. It works surprising reformations in methods and systems. Costs little to install and maintain. Cuts printing expenses down to minimum. What its great powers of mimicry have done for others they may do foryou. Booklet “W”on request— today—from A. B. Dick Company, Chicago—and New York MT aaa eae LeU AN