Now You See It, Now You Don't!
TellZall's object for March is Carbon Paper
For centuries, making multiple copies of documents baffled writers and inventors alike. The choices boiled down to copying by hand or setting type and printing the copies on a printing press. Either procedure was time consuming, expensive, and prone to introducing errors into the copies.
Prior to the introduction of carbon paper, the laborious copying of documents by hand was about the only method available. This medieval monk is copying scripture.
One solution was to take thin paper, coat it on one side with a mixture of wax and pigment, and place it between two sheets of ordinary paper. When one wrote on the top sheet with a pencil or stylus, the pigment transferred to the paper below, making an exact copy. One might even use more than one sheet of pigmented paper and create a sandwich that provided multiple copies.
The first recorded use of the term "carbon paper" for the pigmented sheet was by Englishman Ralph Wedgwood in 1806. In that year he obtained a patent for what he called a "Stylographic Writer," which utilized such paper to make copies. Wedgwood intended his invention to be used by blind people who could use a metal stylus and set of guide wires instead of a quill pen on plain paper.
At almost the same time, in 1808, Italian inventor Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter-like machine that also used coated paper. He, too, was seeking to find a method to help blind people write on paper.
A sheet of pigment-coated "carbon" paper is placed, pigment down, between two sheets of plain paper. When one writes on the top sheet, the pressure transfers pigment to the bottom sheet, producing a copy.
Although not intended by either inventor as a method of making multiple copies, carbon paper soon was put to that use. In 1823 Cyrus Dakin of Massachusetts was making paper coated with carbon pigment for copying purposes, and he was selling it to newspapers. In 1870 Lebbeus H. Rogers founded his L. H. Rogers and Company in New York City to manufacture and sell carbon paper. The United State War Department, predecessor to today's Department of Defense, was an early client.
The invention of a practical typewriter greatly expanded the market for carbon paper. Combining the mechanical typewriter with carbon paper provided an inexpensive means of producing multiple copies of documents. Perhaps as many as a half-dozen copies could be made, although the "bottom" ones tended to be fuzzy looking.
Carbon paper continues to be manufactured and sold today, though its use is far more limited than in times past.
While carbon paper is still manufactured and sold, demand decreased dramatically with the introduction of a practical photocopying machine in the 1960, the introduction of "carbonless" forms in the 1950s, and the widespread use of word-processing hardware and software in the 1980s.
Still, you can see the impact of carbon paper. At the end of many e-mails and letters, writers use the abbreviation "cc" to indicate that a copy has been sent to someone. The abbreviation stands for "carbon copy."
