Carbon Paper

When I learned to type, the only way to make a copy was by tucking a black page between two sheets of white paper. The black 'carbon' stuck to the white page behind it and left an imprint. With each passage through the typewriter, the carbon paper seemed more covered with typewriting script, except of course that it had simply lost its ink in all those places. Every carbon-typed page had to be corrected separately so that the typist ended up with carbon paper black all over her fingers at the end of the day. Making three copies was a nightmare of wadded paper rolling through the carriage and black gunk everywhere. There were special erasers just for the carbon copies, but they never worked and the copies were always full of traces of typos. The best thing about typing with carbon paper was seeing what kind of traces one's writing left at the end of the day. (JM)

Here is a photograph of carbon paper by the photographer Tamir Sher who has kindly granted us permission to print it here.  The website of the photographer is: tamirsher.wordpress.com (photo found by Chancul Jung who is working on carbon paper as one of his projects)