Carbon paperIn 1806, Englishman Ralph Wedgwood secured the first patent for carbon paper, which he described as an “apparatus for producing duplicates of writings.” In his process, thin paper was saturated with printer's ink, then dried between sheets of blotting paper. His idea for the carbon paper was a byproduct of his inventionof a machine to help blind people write, and the “black paper” was really just a substitute for ink. In its original form, Wedgwood's “Stylographic Writer” employed a metal stylus instead of a quill for writing, with the carbon paper placed between two sheets of paper in order to transfer a copy onto the bottom sheet. |
