CC Me—And Be Thankful for Cамиздат

AN OLD-TIME RADIO REFERENCE got me thinking of carbon paper. (What’s ‘carbon paper,’ Grandpa?) Here are selected tidbits gleaned from one place or another.

Carbon Paper. Wikipedia notes, “Carbon paper (originally carbonic paper) consists of sheets of paper that create one or more copies simultaneously with the creation of an original document when inscribed by a typewriter or ballpoint pen. The email term cc which means ‘carbon copy’ is derived from carbon paper.” 

It’s charming (and telling) that Wikipedia includes linked entries for “typewriter” and “ballpoint pen,” but not for “email.” 

A sheet of carbon paper, with the coating side down. Image from Wikipedia.

Wikipedia recounts, “In 1801, Pellegrino Turri, an Italian inventor, invented carbon paper to provide the ink for his mechanical typing machine, one of the first typewriters. Ralph Wedgwood obtained the first patent for carbon paper in 1806…. In 1954 the Columbia Ribbon & Carbon Manufacturing Company filed a patent for what became known in the trade as solvent carbon paper: the coating was changed from wax-based to polymer-based.” 

Carbon paper encouraged painstakingly careful typing because mistakes called for correcting each layer separately (perhaps with whitening out the error and typing the correction over it.) Misalignment of copies was only one of the challenges.

Gad! How much more simple to backspace and enter it correctly.

Copies en Mass. Carbon paper was de rigueur for single- and several-copy documents. For many copies, there were mimeograph machines that worked by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. Making a correct stencil was painstaking.

Wikipedia notes, “Mimeographs, along with spirit duplicators and hectographs, were common technologies for printing small quantities of a document, as in office work, classroom materials, and church bulletins. For even smaller quantities, up to about five, a typist would use carbon paper. Early fanzines were printed by mimeograph because the machines and supplies were widely available and inexpensive.”

Wikipedia recounts, “Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, photocopying gradually displaced mimeographs, spirit duplicators, and hectographs.” Indeed gradually, as I recall making scads of math test mimeos.

Cамиздат: Samizdat. “Carbon paper,” Wikipedia recounts, “was the principal medium of reproduction for samizdat, a publication method used in the former Soviet Union in order to publish books without having to use state-controlled printing houses and risk the censorship or imprisonment.”

Wikipedia‘s entry on this topic adds details: “Samizdat (Russian: самиздат, literally  ’self-publishing’) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because typewriters and printing devices required official registration and permission to access. This was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet censorship.”

Examples of samizdat. Image by Nkrita via Wikipedia.

Etymology. Wikipedia continues, “The Russian poet Nikolay Glazkov coined a version of the term as a pun in the 1940s when he typed copies of his poems and included the note Samsebyaizdat (Самсебяиздат, “Myself by Myself Publishers”) on the front page.”

Similarly, “Tamizdat refers to literature published abroad (там, tam ‘there’), often from smuggled manuscripts.”

“The Polish term for this phenomenon,” Wikipedia says, “coined around 1980 was drugi obieg, or the ‘second circuit’ of publishing.” 

Soviet Restrictions. It’s said that offices and stores had to provide examples of their typewriters’ typeface to local KGB branches so that any printed text could be traced back to the source. (They probably learned this from Western sleuths proving skullduggery in pulp mysteries.) 

Wikipedia recounts, “With the introduction of photocopying machines, the KGB’s Fifth Directorate and Agitprop Department required individuals to get authorization to use printing office photocopiers to prevent the mass production of unapproved material, though restrictions could be bypassed by bribing employees. Privately owned typewriters were considered the most practical means of reproducing samizdat during this time due to these copy machine restrictions. Usually, multiple copies of a single text would be simultaneously made on carbon paper or tissue paper, which were inexpensive and relatively easy to conceal. Copies would then be passed around within trusted networks.” 

Samizdat concealed within a bookbinding. Image by Kaihsu Tai from the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, a former KGB office in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Separating Truth from Propaganda. Wikipedia recounts, “In time, dissidents in the USSR began to admire these qualities for their own sake, the ragged appearance of samizdat contrasting sharply with the smooth, well-produced appearance of texts passed by the censor’s office for publication by the State.”

“In effect,” Wikipedia observes, “the physical form of samizdat itself elevated the reading of samizdat to a prized clandestine act.”

As Launcelot says in The Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 2, “but in the end truth will out.”

We surely hope it continues, whether in original or multiple examples. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024