From: Sam K via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org>
D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
I remember when Xeroxing was new and expensive. In 1967 or 1968 I used a copier at the old TPL Central Reference Library at College and St. George. I paid something like $0.25 a page! Real money then. It was some chemically thing, not Xerox. (I now have that book from which I copied a paper. You can too <https://archive.org/details/programmingsyste0000saul>)
Hugh, was this copy purple in colour and smelled of vinegar? or was it nail polish?
It was a long time ago. My memory of it is fuzzy. The topic of the paper was an example compiler written in LISP, including the code. This intrigued my Grade 12 imagination. I aimed to write an Algol 60 compiler for the IBM 1710 that was across St. George, in the Galbraith building (I was using that computer, eventually with tacit approval). GTALUG meatings were in that building for many years. Purple makes me think of mimeograph and methyl alcohol, but that required a "stencil", so that cannot be what you are refering to. The copy was grey with perhaps a bit of brown, if I remember correctly. Given the two choices of smell you listed, I'm inclined to pick vinegar.