Although modern technology currently moves forward at a more rapid pace than ever before, there are still plenty of legacy solutions that are resilient enough to stand the test of time. Like digital equivalents of living fossils, they have managed to survive the disruptive effect of technological innovation and still thrive in many modern IT-environments.
In this series, we will take a closer look at some of these technological dinosaurs that are still present in our modern times. In this article we’re going to take a closer look at carbon paper and the terms CC and BCC. They often accompany emails and refer to a period in which carbon copies of physical letters were still widely used in mail traffic.
Dirty, slimy and wasteful: welcome to the world of carbon paper
It must have been one of the happiest days in the life of any office worker: the moment that their company finally said goodbye to carbon paper. Although carbon paper used to be a crucial commodity in office spaces all around the world, dealing with the material wasn’t exactly a heavenly affair.
Shaking hands with a colleague, guest or business partner was always tricky business back in the old carbon days since handling slimy black carbons was bound to leave some ink stains on your carefully manicured hands. Did you spot a couple of mistakes or typos? Good luck furiously erasing and retyping that twenty-page report…
dirty, slimy and wasteful: welcome to the world of carbon paper
It must have been one of the happiest days in the life of any office worker: the moment that their company finally said goodbye to carbon paper. Although carbon paper used to be a crucial commodity in office spaces all around the world, dealing with the material wasn’t exactly a heavenly affair.
Shaking hands with a colleague, guest or business partner was always tricky business back in the old carbon days since handling slimy black carbons was bound to leave some ink stains on your carefully manicured hands. Did you spot a couple of mistakes or typos? Good luck furiously erasing and retyping that twenty-page report…
Carbon paper: the rise and fall
Carbon paper was invented by the entrepreneurial Englishman Ralph Wedgewood in the 1820s and used to make copies of physical letters and other documents. Before the development of photographic copiers, a carbon copy was the under-copy of a typed or written document placed over carbon paper and the under-copy sheet itself.
The material caught on fast and conquered offices all over the industrialized world. The invention and rise of word processors, photocopiers, ink-jet printers and laser-jet printers paved the path for cleaner technologies and made carbon paper largely obsolete as a mass commodity, although a handful of manufacturers in several countries still produce carbon paper.
Carbon paper’s legacy in a paperless office
The paperless office is the next step in modern workplace evolution. But even in a time in which we print less and tend to go fully digital instead, the legacy of carbon copies lives on in the terms CC (carbon copy) and BCC (blind carbon copy).
The CC field indicates secondary recipients whose names are visible to one another and to the principal, and the BCC (blind carbon copy) field contains the names of tertiary recipients whose names are invisible to each other and to the primary and secondary recipients.
So even in the most modern offices, the legacy of carbon printing is still present. And not to scare you, but to show that carbon paper may not be yet dead and buried after all, we quote Marc Leder, the managing director of America’s largest carbon paper manufacturer Frye Tech: “As long as computers are not 100 percent foolproof, there will be a need for carbon.”
