Actually that was the second word that sprung to mind.
- posted
6 years ago
Actually that was the second word that sprung to mind.
He could get screwfix and argos pencils on other limbs ...
Students in my class today were drawing tattoos on themselves with pens.
Today's new word: explaining what "Permanent" means on a marker pen.
Owain
Doesn't "permanent" usually imply that the ink is not water-soluble but is probably soluble in an organic solvent such as ethanol/propanol or acetone? After all, the ink needs to be dissolved in *something* in order to be able to transfer if from the pen nib to the paper / student's arm / whatever, with that solvent then evaporating to leave the pigment behind.
Well it's obviously not permanent in the way a tattoo is.
Permanent in this context is probably a reference to permanent laundry markers and similar which make marks which can survive boil washes. Which were necessary in the days when people sent their sheets etc out to laundries. Which in some towns were a big employer around
1890 -1910. I can't remember what they used before markers, pencils or crayons of some kind but can remember the marks being purple.michael adams
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michael adams brought next idea :
It was a pencil, I remember my father having one for some special purpose.
In message , Harry Bloomfield writes
Oh dear, I remember the purple marker pencils.
I must be as old as your father.
I think we just called them indelible pencils , a quick whizz onto the WWW shows that they are still easily obtained. Occasionally at school someone would slip one on to another pupils desk knowing that the pupil was a confirmed pencil chewer. The result could be quite messy. Now parents pay for similar effects at Carnivals , Fetes etc under the moniker of Face Painting.
G.Harman
So why weren't/aren't these children permanently marked ?
Or put another way even if the kid were to be immersed in boiling water every week as were the sheets sent to the laundry, would the marks still be visible months or years later ?
The point about indelible pencils is that they can't be rubbed off or fade like graphite pencil which only ever really coats the top surface of the paper without being chemically attached.
In the pre ballpoint days days when ink was too inconvenient to use when writing chits dockets etc (however defined) this was a simple way of ensuring nobody tried to rub out or alter any pencilled figures to their advantage.
Indelible pencil was water soluble but then this would show evidence of tempering and so raise suspicion straight away if blurred.
Another question though, is whether it was necessary to moisten or lick the tip of either of these types of pencils in order for them to work.
michael adams
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They only worked when wet. You had to lick the end to get the purple dye. It was easy to tell who'd been using one recently by the purple line on the end of their tongue!
They weren't the healthiest way of getting permanent marks:
I remember him doing that too..
Jeff Layman has brought this to us :
He had worked on the railway as a guard, I wonder if that might have been the reason? He eventually bought a ball pen, which he was rather precious about. I remember you pushed the pocket clip down against a spring, then rotated it a quarter turn, to make the tip stay out to use it.
I said similar effect not identical and was referring to the visual appearance rather than the physical properties of the medium used., Anyhow kids unlike sheets are constantly replacing the layer marked with a new one , to see if the marks were still months later visible you would have to collect all the skin cells that have fallen off and reassemble them like a jigsaw.
G.harman
The funny thing is, in the dictionary - the Oxford Talking Dictionary anyway (?1 CD Charity shop) "indelible" is defined as permanent; (of ink, a pencil, etc.) that makes permanent marks.
Which being water soluble, indelible pencils clearly aren't.
Unless the dye in the pencil is "set" by boiling I suppose, if such is possible.
Otherwise this still leaves the question as to what was used to mark laundry in the old days. Nowadays there are laundry markers with all sort of solvents - ( which seem to be all you can get on Google no matter what search terms you use ) but how did they manage back then when a lot of houses sent their sheets to the laundry ? When once out of the basket all sheets look the same. Presumably the dye had to be activated in some way and water wouldn't do. Did they have to dip the pencil in turps ?
michael adams
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In message , michael adams writes
Perhaps they didn't? All sheets looked the same then. How would anyone know they had the sheets they had sent? Would it matter?
Around 1970 I used to send clothes to laundries - I hadn't discovered launderettes - and sometimes the clothes came back with small stiff cloth tags attached bearing code numbers. I assume they stuck or ironed them on before washing and removed them afterwards. Generally this worked all right but sometimes I got back different handkerchiefs. Shirts came back done up in cellophane-fronted packs like when you buy them.
Very much so, I'd have thought.
I live in a London suburb which sprouted loads of large middle class villas from around 1860 onwards. On the other side of town there were loads of laundries which provided work for many of the women who lived in the small terraced houses in that vicinity. ( As an aside some of those small terraced houses weren't demolished until the 50's and some still had a brick copper - a big brick square with a copper inside in an outhouse kitchen where they did their own laundry. Some people were still using irons heated over the gas as well, London 1950's)
Anyway the "Mrs Pooters" who lived in those villas and sent their sheets to those laundries would certainly know what they were sending and certainly wouldn't accept any of the "inferior" sheets as used by their neighbours.
michael adams
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It was often the middle classes who made use of laundries - I live in London suburb
At one time everything had white tags attached. I remember some items havin g several in a row, not sure why. Always towels.
NT
In message , michael adams writes
Yes, I think you're right. Thinking back, didn't people embroider their names, or at least initials, on items like that? That reminds me of school days. Mum bought little white labels, embroidered in blue with my name. Those labels were then sewn into or onto my school clothes.
I remember coppers, and my Gran used an iron heated on the gas, and yes, that would have been in the 50s. Come to think of it, there was a coal fired stove in the kitchen. The iron may have been heated on that.
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