A jelly pad duplicator

Posted on in Equipment

Museum teacher helping student use the jelly pad.

This young pupil is using a jelly pad (gelatine hectograph) at the NSW Schoolhouse Museum to print a map of Australia into his workbook. Before photocopiers, teachers reproduced worksheets for their students using a variety of inventive methods. If you were schooled in the 1960s you might remember the purple stencils with their distinctive metho smell from the spirit duplicator. The jelly pad (gelatine hectograph) pre-dated this but continued to be used by some teachers up to the 1980s. A carbon stencil (usually purple) was laid onto the surface of the jellypad then removed, leaving the image in the jelly. The pupils’ books could then be laid onto the pad to reproduce the image. Jelly pad recipe.