Carbon Paper ?

[SamCapote]

As I was using the "CC" feature to send some emails today, for some reason I thought about what CC stood for, and realized that I was old enough to remember back before computers and copy machines where you had to use a thin sheet of carbon paper in between two pieces of paper to make a Carbon Copy with your typewriter.

 

I thought I would do a search for how available that good old carbon paper which came 25-50-100 sheets in a box was today. Well, other than Amazon, it's damn near extinct. I had to buy some from Meade just for posterity.

[Soot]

Once they become extinct, they will be collectibles! You better hold'em tight!

But rare as they are in the states, they're not as rare in other parts of the world-- that's why we're still using them in our office. :ph34r:

 

**Btw, you'd be surprised how well these carbon papers sell in the low end retail market. In the urban areas many mom&pop stores still uses them, and so are those small restaurants.

Edited March 14, 2011 by Soot

[Alexandra]

I remember carbon paper! That was in the day when typing and spelling skills really mattered. I'm surprised anyone still makes it. Or did Meade pull from the back of some warehouse just for you? I remember trying to explain what a typewriter was to my kids. They never saw one until we toured Ronald Reagan's Air Force 1 and the Reagan Library. Reagan wasn't that long ago yet technologically it seems a century ago. "Yes children, when I was your age the phone was attached to the kitchen wall and everyone in the house had to share it." I'm too young to belong in a museum

[CatBookMom]

As I was using the "CC" feature to send some emails today, for some reason I thought about what CC stood for, and realized that I was old enough to remember back before computers and copy machines where you had to use a thin sheet of carbon paper in between two pieces of paper to make a Carbon Copy with your typewriter.

 

I thought I would do a search for how available that good old carbon paper which came 25-50-100 sheets in a box was today. Well, other than Amazon, it's damn near extinct. I had to buy some from Meade just for posterity.

 

 

I think I saw some at Staples last week, in the specialty paper section....

 

I remember typing an original and 3 copies of documents for one of my first jobs; fixing a mistake was a long job.

[mstone]

"Yes children, when I was your age the phone was attached to the kitchen wall and everyone in the house had to share it." I'm too young to belong in a museum

 

Try to explain why we "hang up" a phone.

[Shangas]

Gosh. Is this showing my age (Youngish as it may be) that I still remember carbon-paper?

 

Maybe not in a writing sense, but still.

 

My grandmother, a professional tailor for 40 years, used to have stacks of carbon-paper in her bedroom. She would pin the cloth to the carbon-paper with pins. Flip it over and then with this special corrugated wheel she would trace out the outline or cut of the cloth. The wheel would press into the carbon-paper and leave a faint outline on the cloth which she could then cut along with her scissors.

 

I haven't seen carbon-paper like that in YEARS. Not since my gran moved to a retirement home, and that was nearly 10 years ago.

Edited March 14, 2011 by Shangas

[Alexandra]

"Yes children, when I was your age the phone was attached to the kitchen wall and everyone in the house had to share it." I'm too young to belong in a museum

 

Try to explain why we "hang up" a phone.

 

Or a party line. They wouldn't get that one at all!

[Shangas]

I can still remember when we had to 'dial' phones, 'hang up'...

 

...the only thing I'm not old enough for is to ever have to pick up a phone and say "Hello, Operator?", except for, I believe, international calls.

[Black Rose]

"Yes children, when I was your age the phone was attached to the kitchen wall and everyone in the house had to share it." I'm too young to belong in a museum

 

Try to explain why we "hang up" a phone.

 

Or a party line. They wouldn't get that one at all!

Ugh I remember those well. We had 6 or 8 people on "our" line.

 

I also remember back in elementary school, that the "photocopier" was one of those hand cranked machines, Gestetner I think it was. We used to get into trouble from the teacher for sniffing the handouts

[Shangas]

You mean a mimeograph?

 

http://www.tradenote.net/images/users/000/242/856/products_images/640718.jpg

[WendyNC]

 

I think I saw some at Staples last week, in the specialty paper section....

 

I remember typing an original and 3 copies of documents for one of my first jobs; fixing a mistake was a long job.

 

Although Staples doesn't seem to list it on the website, I was thinking before I saw your post that I had seen some in my local Staples as well. I still have part of a pack in my desk.

 

In the mid-nineties, we were doing some work for what was then a start-up company for online business software. I took a piece of carbon paper, matted it, framed it, having written "early back-up device" on the mat. The president of the company thought it was hilarious, but none of the bright young computer whiz kids got the joke!

[GoldenGirl]

We used to get into trouble from the teacher for sniffing the handouts

 

I can still smell that odor from the mimeo machine....weird

[PaFitch]

Wasn't the really smelly process the "duplicator" machine (that made blue copies)? The school district where I work collected up some leftover cans of fluid and had to pay a hazardous waste company to dispose of it. I had to use carbon paper for my term papers and as a poor student stretched a sheet until it no longer left an imprint. Sentimentality will never make me want to give up my computer for thesis writing (if I ever have to do it again).

[WendyNC]

Ah, mimeographs and dittomasters. Personally, I preferred the smell of dittomasters, but that's another one of those things which seemed to be a matter of personal preference.

[GoldenGirl]

Ah, mimeographs and dittomasters. Personally, I preferred the smell of dittomasters, but that's another one of those things which seemed to be a matter of personal preference.

 

Awe yes...it was the dittomaster scent that I am remembering LOL

[CatBookMom]

 

 

In the mid-nineties, we were doing some work for what was then a start-up company for online business software. I took a piece of carbon paper, matted it, framed it, having written "early back-up device" on the mat. The president of the company thought it was hilarious, but none of the bright young computer whiz kids got the joke!

 

:clap1:

[Silvermink]

In the mid-nineties, we were doing some work for what was then a start-up company for online business software. I took a piece of carbon paper, matted it, framed it, having written "early back-up device" on the mat. The president of the company thought it was hilarious, but none of the bright young computer whiz kids got the joke!

 

Man, I was born in '79 and I remember carbon paper...

 

We had a dial phone, too. For the longest time we had our pushbutton phones set to "pulse" because we didn't realize that "tone" would work just fine on the same line.

[zacharysilvey]

Just thought I'd throw in a current use for carbon paper. As a BioChem major I use this stuff every day when writing up lab reports. Many schools require students to use carbon copy lab notebook. Though the cover of mine says "carbon free."

[Cedar]

In the mid-nineties, we were doing some work for what was then a start-up company for online business software. I took a piece of carbon paper, matted it, framed it, having written "early back-up device" on the mat. The president of the company thought it was hilarious, but none of the bright young computer whiz kids got the joke!

 

Man, I was born in '79 and I remember carbon paper...

 

We had a dial phone, too. For the longest time we had our pushbutton phones set to "pulse" because we didn't realize that "tone" would work just fine on the same line.

 

I still have a couple rotary dial phones. I have a friend who uses a dial phone, exclusively, and when her grandkids came to visit stood there looking at it, totally baffled as to how to get the durn thing to work! Another friends teenager came up with a good idea, to put a cord on a phone so it wouldn't get lost (that was before they became attached to their heads).

Yes, loved that smell of mimeograph paper! And gasoline. Gasoline doesn't smell as good as it used to.

Don't feel bad, the pulse or touchtone was controlled by the equipment in the central office so it may not have worked until they changed the equipment. I remember when you had to pay extra for touchtone service, any color of phone besides black, any style of phone like a "Princess" or "Trimline" and each extension phone in your house EVERY month.

 

Cedar

Former Ohio Bell employee in residential repair (pay phones, too!) Ah, the good life!

[SamCapote]

Lot's of great memories. Wonder what happened to all those phone booths and pay phones?

 

Wasn't the really smelly process the "duplicator" machine (that made blue copies)? The school district where I work collected up some leftover cans of fluid and had to pay a hazardous waste company to dispose of it. I had to use carbon paper for my term papers and as a poor student stretched a sheet until it no longer left an imprint. Sentimentality will never make me want to give up my computer for thesis writing (if I ever have to do it again).

 

Back when I'm talking about....comic books were 10 cents, before there were computers, before Xerox 'copiers' (one of the most effective product name brandings; Kleenex was another), there was no such thing as "hazardous waste." Heck, there was a time when the natural and appropriate thing to do with your garbage from eating, drinking, changing diapers, etc. was to toss it out of the window. It made no sense to clutter up the inside of your car. :ltcapd: