Workplace & School

Carbon copies
Carbon copies

There are 3 comments for this item.

Posted by ginette 77 at 12:34 pm (PST) on Tue March 2, 2010   
oh my god do i remember these
Posted by paktype at 11:04 am (PDT) on Wed July 13, 2011   
Me too! And I still remember the "tapocketa pocketa" sound of the mimeograph machine that ran off copies of tests that the teachers used to type onto the carbon copy (we called them "stencils").
Posted by Duff at 10:38 pm (PDT) on Sun July 31, 2011   
If I recall correctly, mimeograph machines used green stencils. You'd disable or remove the typewriter's ribbon, and the letters would be cut out from the rubbery plastic sheet, which became the master.

Ditto machines used a two-ply master with a purple-blue waxy material on the second ply: when you typed, wax was transferred to the back of the first ply, creating a mirror image. This was then used as the master.

Carbon paper, as pictured here, was simply sandwiched between blank pieces of ordinary paper, and the stack was fed into the typewriter. When the keys were struck, duplicate images would be transferred to each "carbon copy" page, getting fuzzier and fuzzier the further they were from the top page.

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