Carbonless copy paper

“ Tissues serve a large number of purposes, as wrappings for high-class goods, therefore they must be strong and free from chemicals, for fly-leaves for the protection of engravings and prints, and also for the basis of carbon papers which are used for obtaining a simultaneous copy of written or typewritten documents. ”

“ Carbon paper is used, the white sheet being written upon and the tinted one receiving the carbon impression. Each official is supplied with these pads, and by their use he always retains a copy of any memorandum or communication he makes to another official or department. ”

“ The copier is economical in operation. The best quality of paper costs 50 cents a roll, and a little more than one roll, or about 60 cents' worth of paper is required for 1,000 copies; and there is no carbon paper to buy. The office boy can operate the copier, and it takes but a few minutes to copy the day's mail of the average concern. If desired, the machine can be obtained with an electric motor attached, but this power is really unnecessary unless the correspondence averages 300 or more letters a day. ”

“ The carbon method is not expensive. Good carbon paper costs 2 cents or less a sheet, and for 1,000 copies only about 30 sheets are required. A satisfactory quality of plain paper for copies can be bought for $1.00 or less a thousand. ”

“ If such a safe edge be not provided, the carbon print will not adhere to the copper during development; therefore, the extreme edges of the tissue must be guarded from the light during the exposure in the printing frame.
The exposure to light under the negative or transparency must be timed by means of an actinometer, which may be improvised by dividing a strip of tracing paper into ten spaces, and numbering these spaces so:
Write the figures with good black ink and then cut other pieces of white tracing paper into strips of the same width. ”

“ In 1874 J. R. Sawyer patented a flexible support for developing on; this was a sized paper coated with gelatin and treated with an ammoniacal solution of shellac in borax, on which wax or resin was rubbed. The advantage of this flexible support is that the dark parts of the picture have no tendency to contract from the lighter parts, which they were apt to do when a metal plate was used, as was the case in Johnson's original process With this patent, and minor improvements made since, carbon-printing has arrived at its present state of perfection. ”

“ When a colour is present on which alum would have a prejudicial effect this is usually replaced by about one-third of its weight of sulphate of zinc. Many mineral substances have from time to time been added to paper stock, principally to increase its weight, and in 1858 Sholl took out a patent for adding carbonate of lime, [120] a substance which, however, had long been fraudulently used in order to increase the weight, but he found it to have the property of fixing the ink in the pores of the paper, thus rendering it immovable. ”

“ In order to distinguish between a carbon ink of this nature and an ordinary writing ink all that is necessary is to apply a dilute bleaching agent. The blue-black pigment of the writing ink will then gradually disappear, whereas the fine particles of carbon in the other ink will show little, if any alteration, and may still be discerned under the microscope as minute black granules resting upon the fibres of the paper. ”

“ In Swan's carbon process the image is produced in the pigments of the painter, and whatever of permanence may be predicated of a water-color drawing, may be affirmed of the photographs produced in the same materials. If carbon be regarded as the most stable coloring matter which can be employed, lampblack or other similar preparations of carbon can be used in the production of the print. Sepia, bistre, Indian-ink, or any combination of these or other pigments, by which a pleasing monochrome may be produced and permanency attained, is equally available in this method of printing. ”

“ There are no doubt other causes at work in our heavily charged town atmospheres which have a destructive effect on our photographs. At anyrate, be the cause what it may, it is the rule and not the exception to find a paper print of, say ten years old, sadly faded and generally disfigured. Such a great disadvantage as this has met with an antidote in the shape of a discovery which has to a certain extent superseded the practice of silver printing. We allude to the carbon process, which is dependent upon the curious fact that bichromatised gelatine, after exposure to light, becomes insoluble. ”

“ Manufacturers, chemists and laymen in great number for many years wasted money, time and energy in diligent worship at a secret shrine which could not give the information they sought. A summary of the meager and barren results they secured is of little value and unimportant. Hence, there is no REAL "safety" ink.
It is true that lampblack (carbon) as made into ink, resists any chemical or chemicals, but simple water applied on a soft sponge will soon remove such ink marks. The reason for this is obvious, the ink does not penetrate the paper. ”

“ A paper that is used by Allen & Rowell, for carbon printing, is comparatively cheap, and is an excellent paper. It is not so stiff as the linen record, and the whites are quite as pure. It does not cockle, neither does it curl while being sensitized. ”

“ In making carbon transparencies for instance, the gelatine film which is squeegeed against the glass necessarily takes its dimensions from the paper to which it is attached, and if that be expanded more in the one direction than another, the transparency is similarly deformed ”

“ Not at all; it is very little more difficult than ordinary carbon printing, which is practised successfully by numbers of amateurs. Moreover, such a relief as I have described—which is practically nothing more than an ordinary process block—could be produced by any photo-engraver. The process that I have described is, in all essentials, that which is used in the reproduction of pen-and-ink drawings, and any of the hundreds of workmen who are employed in that industry could make a relief-block of a finger-print, with which an undetectable forgery could be executed. ”

“ Modern Ink, on the contrary, leaves its marks upon paper, parchment, &c., by penetrating the material to such a depth that it cannot be erased (mechanically) without the removal or destruction of the surface which it has tinged. Chemical agency, as of various acids, chlorine and its compounds, is generally employed, therefore, to discharge the color from modern writing-ink-marks. Carbon, in all its common forms, (charcoal, bituminous coal, anthracite, jet, plumbago, lignite, ivory-black, lamp-black and soot,) is wholly unalterable in color by any of these chemical means. ”

“ Transfer or carbon papers so much used in making several copies of an article on the typewriter are made by coating paper with starch, flour, gum, and coloring matter. Paper can be used for shoes and hats, ties, collars, and even for "rubbers." It has been successfully used for sails for light vessels, and is excellent made into light garments for hospital use because it is so cheap that it can be burned after wearing. Wood pulp can be run through fine tubes into water and made so pliable that it can be twisted into cord or spun and woven into "silk." ”

“ The tissue is rather more sensitive to255 light than silver paper, and should therefore be opened and handled in subdued light. It must be kept as dry as possible. A rather vigorous negative is best for carbon printing, one not too strong in contrasts. Before placing the negative in the frame, we must give it what is termed a "safe edge." This is done by making a narrow border, say of about a quarter of an inch or less, round the negative, either on the glass or film side, with opaque black varnish, or it may be done by gumming on narrow strips of paper, such as lantern-slide binders. ”

“ Previously to my entering upon the detail of the machinery used for unrolling the manuscripts, it maybe necessary to premise, that, from the effects of volcanic heat, they are reduced to a perfect coal, liable to be crumbled into a black dust by a very feeble pressure of the fingers, such as might be the state of a tight roll of paper after being exposed to the action of an heated oven, without being absolutely ignited: with this favourable difference, however, that, instead of paper, they had been written on papyrus, a substance much stronger and glutinous than I our present writing-paper. ”

“ In various coated papers sheets with uneven coating or surface markings should not be included as "good" paper. A paper which is even in texture cannot be considered matched by a supply which is "wild" or cloudy in the look-through. Although wildness is sometimes accompanied by strength in paper, this is not always so, and it is desirable that printing papers should not be wild.
To analyse papers in order to discover chemical residues and to identify them requires some very delicate tests, and unless one has had an extensive chemical training, mistaken conclusions may result. ”

“ The process of oxidation, brought about rapidly under the conditions of the experiment described, takes place in papers of low quality exposed to air in the ordinary circumstances of daily use, but of course at an extremely slow rate. The deterioration of such paper is not, however, due to the simple oxidation of the cellulose compounds, because other factors have to be taken into account. The presence of impurities in the paper on the one hand, and of chemical vapours in the air on the other, hastens the decay of papers very considerably. ”

“ But, since it is expensive and requires daylight or strong artificial light for printing, nearly all commercial workers prefer the somewhat less beautiful and less permanent, but more convenient, gas-light paper, so-called because it can be manipulated entirely by gas-light, neither daylight nor a dark-room being required. This medium consists of paper that has been coated with an emulsion somewhat similar to that used for plates, but requiring much longer exposure. ”

“ INTAGLIO PROCESSES.
PHOTOGRAVURE, AUTOTYPE, DALLASTYPE, ETC.
Photogravure.—First, a photographic negative is taken direct from the picture to be reproduced, and from this an autotype carbon print is taken and transferred on to glass or silvered copper, instead of on the paper used in making carbon prints for sale. This picture is in delicate relief, and forms the mould, upon which copper is electrically deposited. After being made “conductive,” the carbon mould is placed in a galvanic bath, the deposit of copper upon it taking the impression perfectly. ”

“ When it is left to itself to dry, it becomes shriveled, and has a bad appearance. To guard against this, the following process is adopted: An endless strip of paper is passed by machinery first through a vat of sulphuric acid, and then through water, ammonia, and water again; next a cloth-covered roller deprives it of a portion of the water, and finally it is pressed and smoothed out by means of polished heated cylinders.
When properly manufactured, parchment-paper has the same color and translucency as animal parchment, its structure having undergone a change from fibrous to corneous. ”

“ Whilst at the present time carbon printing is more largely used by professional photographers, yet its simplicity, the absence of chemical formulæ and complications combined with the beauty of the results, makes it eminently suitable for amateur workers, and hence it has been thought desirable that as an introduction to the subsequent article, a brief and simple outline of the process should be given for the benefit of those who have not hitherto made its acquaintance. ”

“ They are these: the image is formed of carbon or other known permanent pigment; the vehicle or menstruum in which the pigment is held is gelatine, rendered quite insoluble by combination with the oxide of chromium; the amount of gelatine present in the image, and uniting it with the paper on which it rests, is not greater than that on the surface of a sheet of well-sized writing-paper, so that there is as little danger of the vehicle cracking or decomposing, as there is of the pigment fading. Absolute imperishability cannot probably be predicated of any picture formed of pigments and paper ”

“ No sooner had the truth of this new principle been established than the work to establish it firmly and commercially was carried on more assiduously than ever. The next immediate step was a further investigation of the possibilities of improving the quality of the carbon filament. Edison had previously made a vast number of experiments with carbonized paper for various electrical purposes, with such good results that he once more turned to it and now made fine filament-like loops of this material which were put into other lamps. ”

“ Others claimed that carbon was the one permanent color, and cited the old Indian and Chinese inks which have stood for centuries as illustrations of its permanency. These statements were so widely different that I pursued the inquiry further, and found it was conceded that, if a process could be discovered by which carbon could be dissolved and made to retain its color, no known substance would make so permanent an ink; but that there was no such process, and in the inks now made the carbon was simply held in suspension in the ink without any chemical union ”