ThrowBack Thursday: Where Were You When Carbon Paper Went Out For Good?

Via Pinterest/BBC

"ONE of the happiest moments of Norma Carey's life was the day she threw away her carbon paper. It was the early 1970's when her employer, a law firm in Washington, switched from carbons to copiers."

Good Morning Folks,

ONE of the happiest moments of Norma Carey's life was the day she threw away her carbon paper. It was the early 1970's when her employer, a law firm in Washington, switched from carbons to copiers.

''I was absolutely delighted,'' said Ms. Carey, 64  a legal secretary for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld to the New York Times in a 1998 interview. No more ink on the hands from handling slimy black carbons. No more furious erasing. And no more retyping 20-page documents. Not once, Ms. Carey said, has she felt nostalgic about the messy stuff.

With today's laser and ink-jet printers, word processors, and voice-recognition and spell-checking software, carbon paper — invented by an Englishman named Ralph Wedgewood in the 1820's — is but a shadow of the crucial commodity it was. Using carbon paper today is like using a mortar and pestle instead of a food processor, or pounding your laundry against a rock instead of using a washing machine. Yet there remains a small but steady demand for it.

Carbon paper (originally carbonic paper) was originally paper coated on one side with a layer of a loosely bound dry ink or pigmented coating, bound with wax, used for making one or more copies simultaneously with the creation of an original document when using a typewriter or a ballpoint pen.

Carbon paper is placed between the original and a second sheet to be copied onto. As the user writes or types on the original, the pressure from the typebar or pen deposits the ink on the blank sheet, thus creating a "carbon copy" of the original document. This technique is generally limited to four or five copies.

As the ink is transferred from the carbon paper to the underlying paper, an impression of the corresponding text is left on the "carbon" where some of the ink was removed. A single piece of carbon paper can be repeatedly reused until the impression grows too light.

Demand for carbon paper has dropped by 85 percent in the last 20 years. The reason: computers have made manual and electric typewriters all but obsolete. Copying machines, laser printers and carbonless paper — which uses a chemical process to create copies without the need for carbon paper — were the final blow. But... ''As long as computers are not 100 percent foolproof, there will be a need for carbon,'' said Marc Leder, managing director of Frye Tech. Carbon paper is still used in multi-part forms from traffic tickets, to plumbing work orders to, lab work.

And the moniker "CC:" which used to stand for "Carbon Copy" now lives on in every document you mail or print.

For those who remember typing and retyping and making "carbon copies" in law firms, it's not a pleasant memory. So while we like to throw back on Thursday, think of it as one of the main reasons everyone is whistling while they work today.

The end of carbon paper ushered in decades of productivity and progress in law firms that their retirees could never have imagined.

On the other hand, with pressure on law firms to cut costs, an obvious starting point is in that expensive real estate you are using to store what may include "carbon copies" that you haven’t looked at in 50 years, nor ever will.

Over time — decades in many cases — the volume of retained records grows, as does the cost of storing them. But by (re)IMAGINING the records retention process, and with a thoughtful policy to change it, law firms who have been pressured to cut costs can find help from professionals like FSO who will help you solve it. 

Thanks to Wikipedia, The New York Times and to you for listening.

Have a GREAT Day. Love Life.

I'll be a seeing you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

==> Going Paperless 
We recently completed the largest and most successful document conversion in the New York area, migrating over 35 million pages to electronic format. Savings come not just from eliminating each $900 lateral file, but also from not buying or leasing Class A office space to store paper, and reducing the costs of utilities, equipment maintenance and consumables associated with paper copies.

Can your incumbent do this?