Carbon paper
Italian invention enabling simultaneous document copies via typewriter or pen.
Before email, there was carbon paper, or carbonic paper. Placed between sheets, it let a typewriter or ballpoint pen create multiple copies of a document at once. This is why "cc" in an email stands for "carbon copy."
Quick Facts
- Inventor
- Pellegrino Turri
- Year of invention
- 1801
- First patent holder
- Ralph Wedgwood
- Year of first patent
- 1806
- Original coating material
- loosely bound dry ink or pigmented coating bound with wax
- Later coating material
- polymer-based (solvent carbon paper)
Facts from the source article.
History
Carbon paper was invented in 1801 by Italian inventor Pellegrino Turri, who needed a way to supply ink for his early mechanical typing machine. The first patent for it was granted in 1806 to Ralph Wedgwood. Originally, carbon paper was simply paper coated on one side with a dry, wax-bound layer of pigment or ink. For many years, its production was the biggest use of montan wax. In 1954, the Columbia Ribbon & Carbon Manufacturing Company patented a new version called solvent carbon paper. Instead of a wax-based hot-melt coating, it used a polymer-based coating applied with a solvent. This change allowed manufacturers to use polyester or other plastic film as a base, though the product kept the name carbon paper. Copies made with solvent carbon paper were much less likely to smear than those from the older wax-based type. Carbon paper also became the main reproduction method for samizdat, the underground publishing system in the former Soviet Union that avoided state-controlled printing and censorship.
Modern uses
The invention of word processing and the fading of typewriters meant documents could be printed in unlimited quantities, sealing the fate of carbon paper, which had already lost ground to photocopiers and carbonless copy paper. Its use now is limited to a few specific cases. These include point-of-sale receipts, often kept as a fallback when electronic payment systems break down, as well as instant fine tickets, duplicate checks, certain money orders (though the U.S. Postal Service has moved to digital versions), and tracking forms for express mail services that need multiple copies. In India, the sheer volume of form-filling keeps carbon paper in wide use. By 2013, manufacturing had shrunk to just one eight-person company in Canada, one in the United Kingdom, and two small firms in the United States. Artists have experimented with it for painting and decorating envelopes in mail art, and it is a standard tool for transferring patterns onto glass for stained glass work. Physics labs in schools still use carbon paper disks for experiments tracking projectile motion and position.
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