How often do my readers use carbon paper? If you're like me, the answer is hardly ever. But this creates a problem in correspondence: will you remember what you said in your last letter? An advantage to digital correspondence is that it's usually easy to reconstruct a conversation, either by going to your Sent folder or by checking older messages that are quoted below your current one. If you're just working on paper, it's not so simple. You could always scan or photograph your letter before sending it off, and I've done so in some situations, but with personal correspondence, that feels to me like violating some sort of unspoken typospherian contract.
So when I sat down to answer some letters recently on my 1938 Continental portable, I felt the need to make a carbon copy.
I dug through my drawers and found this:
It looks like a relic of the 1930s or ’40s. The wrapper reads:
GUARANTEED
To Give Best Results
When Used Properly in a
Standard "Kant-Slip" Register
WRITE
STANDARD
RIGHT
SEMI BLUE CARBON
7 1/4 inch 2 ply
THE STANDARD REGISTER CO.
Dayton, Ohio
Manufacturers of
STANDARD BUSINESS FORMS
I don't even remember how or when I got this, but it's never been used. I opened it and found that the roll even has its own serial number:
Even in the absence of a "Kant-Slip" Register, the stuff works.
Now I'll know what I said in this letter, even after it's mailed off to its recipient. Ah, the wonders of modern technology!
I'll add that if you care about posterity, and posterity turns out to care about you, a carbon copy is much more durable and legible than a digital file, which can alter, degrade, or simply become unreadable with the passing of the years.
Oh, and this is a Kant-Slip (as sold on eBay a while ago).
