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Carbon Paper
Brent Gilliard (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 2.0
Pixel

නිර්මාතෘ

Pixel

20. අගෝස්තු 2026FI
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Carbon Paper

A sheet coated on one side with pigment held in wax, placed between two sheets of paper so that the pressure of writing transfers a copy to the sheet below. Ralph Wedgwood patented it in 1806 as part of a writing machine intended to help blind people write in straight lines, and it turned out to be far more useful as a way of making duplicates. For most of the twentieth century every office document existed in an original and a number of carbons, and the number was a status marker — the further down the stack, the fainter your copy and the lower your rank. The word survives long after the material: cc on an email is carbon copy, a term for a physical sheet of waxed pigment that almost nobody using it has ever handled.
ආරම්භක
45 minutes

උපදෙස්

1

Make the transfer coating

Pigment suspended in a soft binder that releases under pressure.

  1. Melt a small amount of wax gently.
  2. Stir in fine carbon black or soot until evenly dispersed.
  3. Keep it fluid but not hot enough to smoke.
The binder must be soft enough to release where pressed and firm enough not to smear everywhere else. That balance is the entire formulation problem — too waxy and the copy is greasy, too dry and nothing transfers.

Materials for this step:

Beeswax Block (pure, yellow)Beeswax Block (pure, yellow)50 ග්‍රෑ
Lampblack PigmentLampblack Pigment10 ග්‍රෑ
2

Coat a sheet thinly and evenly

Thin paper, thin coating, one side only.

  1. Apply the warm mixture to one side of a thin sheet.
  2. Draw a straight edge across to level it.
  3. Let it cool completely before handling.
Use the thinnest paper you can. A thick carbon sheet spreads the pen's pressure over a wider area and blurs the copy — which is exactly why commercial carbon paper is flimsy, and why it tore so easily.

Materials for this step:

Filter PaperFilter Paper1 පැකට්
3

Make a copy, and get the orientation right

Stack it: original on top, carbon coated-side DOWN, copy sheet beneath.

  1. Assemble the stack and write firmly with a hard point.
  2. Separate the sheets and inspect the copy.
  3. Now deliberately put the carbon in upside down and write again.
Reversed, you get a mirror image on the back of your own original and nothing useful below. Everyone who ever used the stuff did this at least once, and the mistake is instructive — the coating only transfers in the direction it faces.
4

Find how deep the stack can go

Test the limit that defined office hierarchy.

  1. Build a stack of several alternating carbon and plain sheets.
  2. Write once with firm pressure.
  3. Compare the legibility of each copy down the stack.
Each layer absorbs and spreads pressure, so copies fade with depth and go blurry as the impression widens. Typists used a hard platen and struck harder for deep stacks; the practical limit was a handful of usable copies, and the last one was always the junior's.
5

History and context

Ralph Wedgwood patented his Stylographic Writer in 1806 — carbon-coated paper used with a metal stylus, devised partly as an aid for blind writers. Pellegrino Turri was working on similar carbon copying in Italy at about the same time, also in connection with a writing machine for a blind friend. It is a genuine case of an assistive technology becoming general office equipment.

The typewriter made it essential. A pen presses in one place at a time; a typebar strikes hard and sharply, which is ideal for driving an impression through several layers. Carbon paper and the typewriter arrived at each other in the 1870s and 80s, and the combination defined the shape of business correspondence for a century: one original, a file copy, and copies for whoever mattered.

What replaced it, in order: the stencil duplicator for many copies of one document, photocopying from the late 1950s, then carbonless copy paper — sheets coated with microcapsules that burst under pressure and react with a clay layer on the sheet below, giving the same result without loose black powder. Then, of course, the computer, which made copies free and identical.

The vocabulary outlived the object. Cc means carbon copy. Bcc is blind carbon copy — the recipient list literally hidden from the others, exactly as it was when a typist made an extra copy without adding the name to the distribution line. The metaphor has survived at least two generations who never saw the thing.

ද්‍රව්‍ය

3

CC0 පොදු වසම

මෙම බ්ලූප්‍රින්ට් CC0 යටතේ නිකුත් කර ඇත. ඔබට අවසර නොමැතිව පිටපත් කිරීම, වෙනස් කිරීම, බෙදා හැරීම සහ භාවිතා කිරීම කළ හැක.

බ්ලූප්‍රින්ට් හරහා නිෂ්පාදන මිලදී ගැනීමෙන් නිර්මාතෘට සහාය වන්න නිර්මාතෘ කොමිසම විකුණුම්කරුවන් විසින් නියම කළ, හෝ මෙම බ්ලූප්‍රින්ට්හි නව අනුවාදයක් සාදා ආදායම බෙදා ගැනීමට ඔබේ බ්ලූප්‍රින්ට්හි සම්බන්ධතාවයක් ලෙස ඇතුළත් කරන්න.

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