One of my favorite new idioms is CC : Carbon Copy!

eberntson
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One of my favorite new idioms is CC : Carbon Copy!

Postby eberntson » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:37 pm

I'm just about old enough to remember what carbon copy is. Why are we still using this?

PS I'm good at questions, not so good at writing up answers.

KatyBr
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CC

Postby KatyBr » Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:04 pm

I think partially it's because the concept was undrestood when it outlived it's function, that is no carbon paper is needed in the typwriter any more to make exact copies to send out. The expression was "CC to:" on the bottom of the page, let's folks know there are copies out there and to whom they were sent.

Katy

Stargzer
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Re: One of my favorite new idioms is CC : Carbon Copy!

Postby Stargzer » Tue Feb 15, 2005 6:11 pm

I'm just about old enough to remember what carbon copy is. Why are we still using this?

PS I'm good at questions, not so good at writing up answers.
"Why is there air?"
-Bill Cosby
Are man-made diamonds merely carbon copies of real diamonds?

I vaguely remember once seeing "CC" defined as "Courtesy Copy" instead of "Carbon Copy," although I would think it originated as "Carbon."

. . . and I've yet to see a BC: in an EMail written in Braile . . . :wink:

However, someone recently asked me why people still use impact printers such dot-matrix printers. When was the last time you tried to use a multi-part form in a laser printer, a thermal printer, or an ink-jet printer? There are still some processes where a multi-part copy is quicker and easier than printing multiple separate copies of something such as an order form, credit card receipt, a warehouse pick list, and so forth.

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Postby anders » Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:56 am

I don't believe in the "Carbon Copy" interpretation. A carbon copy was the only practical means in those days of obtaining a true copy, so there was no need to state how the copy was made.

As an aside, I made my first commercial translation using a portable typewriter and making a carbon copy for my records. That was many years before I got hold of my first packet switching program, which allowed me to send files at the incredible speed of 128 bytes per second, if I could find a customer who had a billboard program to receive them.
Irren ist männlich

KatyBr
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cc

Postby KatyBr » Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:03 pm

I was a secretary back in the early 70's when computers were still room-sized, cc was carbon copy. even back in the 60's when mimeograph had it's last gasp it was Carbon-copy. and it Did refer to the carbon paper back up we used in our up-to-date very modern Royals and Smith Corona's.

Katy

those were popular typewriters then.
a royal was

eberntson
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I've been thinking & watching Doris Day movies...

Postby eberntson » Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:18 am

I think the usage of CC is the important thing here... Firstly, a Carbon Copy had a legal status, similar to when the government updated the law to make a fax a legal document. Secondly, I think it was a way of giving instructions, don't just send out a memo to this person but make a carbon of it; it might be a status thing. Finally, it just kind of flows of the tongue and people love thing like that, and it abbreviates nicely too, "Just CC JR at CBS! Cool LJ..."

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Postby KatyBr » Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:04 pm

I've been thinking & watching Doris Day movies...
and I would have thought those two activities were mutually exclusive, :) J/K

as to the legal-status I'm sure that you are right,, except in an email sending a CC, isn't a mmatter of legality, it's easily tweaked to render it....illegal. But the term is still viable, even if not reliable?

Katy

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Postby William » Fri Mar 25, 2005 6:58 pm

I found this quote atthissomewhat scholarly website (there is nice bibliography)
about the very exciting history of carbon paper. It really is interesting. Check it out.
But Not Without Leaving Its Mark!
Carbon paper is still commercially available today (1995). However, its use has declined significantly in the last 20 years, despite the proliferation of copying in the modern office over the same period. Perhaps it will continue to be used until the "paperless office" becomes a reality, or perhaps it will always be ideal for some applications. Regardless of its ultimate fate, carbon paper has already left its mark on one of the most recent technologies to enter the workplace: many electronic mail computer programs (Email) include the abbreviation "cc" to indicate the recipients of a "carbon copy" of the electronic message.

I agree with Katy. The phrase "Carbon Copy" was used extensively when I was in college (1967-1971) and when I became a civil servant in 1974. Sometimes the word "Carbon" was used without the word "Copy".

[/u]

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Postby Apoclima » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:48 pm

I agree with Katy and William (as usual)!

Apo
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck

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Postby William » Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:55 pm

Do you remember blue carbon paper?

When I was young my parents gave me a chemistry set one Christmas. Included was a booklet that contained directions for making your own carbon paper. It involved making a thin paste out of shavings from a bar of soap, some water, some blue or black ink, and typing paper (copier/printer paper was not known in those days). It worked pretty well if the paste was of the right consistency and was spread more or less evenly over the paper.

I was a disappointed young man when I realized that the set contained neither the proper chemicals nor did the booklet contain the proper instructions for making gun powder and other explosive mixtures, and of course you couldn't get those instructions from the internet because Al Gore had not yet invented it. It was probably just as well. Once I almost burned the house down with my homemade flame thrower. Heaven know's what would have happened if I had been able to make gun powder.

William

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Postby Apoclima » Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:06 pm

A flame thrower in the house? My mom told me never to play with my flamethrower in the house. Your folks must have been very permissive, William!

Very funny! Thank God you didn't learn how to make gunpowder!

Anyway, I remember blue, black and red Carbon Paper! If you weren't careful it stained everything from hands to countertops.

My mom didn't let me play with my carbon paper in the house either!

Apo
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck

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Postby William » Sun Mar 27, 2005 11:16 pm

My father passed on in 1991, but my mother, bless her heart, is still alive and to this day does not know about my flame thrower. I still don't want to tell her about it.

William

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Postby anders » Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:20 am

Nostalgia!

In my teen room, all metal had a matte finish. The marble window-sill had lots of little pits.

That was not caused by acid rain]/i].

Probably fortunately, my attempt to make gun-cotton was a failure. I had no instructions, so I just mixed what I thought was neded. The result was mainly huge amounts of brown nitrogen dioxide gas.
Fortunately, I didn't know any facts about it, like from Wikipedia:
Deadly poison! Insidious. Can cause lung edema or death after several days delay. 100 ppm dangerous, 200 ppm may be lethal for short exposures.

so I survived (obviously).

Continuing with the dangers of chemistry, I recently learned from my sister the chemistry teacher that one of my favourite experiments in organic chemistry now is banned because of the carcinogenous material involved. I have demonstrated it for a couple of chem classes that I taught: you carefully pour two liquids in a beaker, one on top of the other. In the interface, nylon is formed, which you can pick up using a glass rod, and then wind up a seemingly never-ending thread.
Irren ist männlich

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Postby KatyBr » Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:33 pm

... but my mother, .... to this day does not know about my flame thrower. I still don't want to tell her about it.

William
Who hasn't seen a Future Darwin award winner make a flame thrower with an aerosol can and a lighter?

I certainly never expected this of you, Stouty.

Katy

William
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Postby William » Mon Mar 28, 2005 5:05 pm

You have me, Katy. It was a can of RAID with some bailiing wire wrapped around it near the top and a strand of the wire with a tight coil of three or four loops extended out in front of the nozzle. I used strike anywhere matches, not a lighter. Sometimes the matches would go out when I pressed the button that opened the nozzle, but they mostly stayed lit. It was a handy device for singing moths that clung to the screen of my bedroom door (which opened to the outside).

I was young then, Katy, with a promisiing career as a pyromaniac. Somehow I was never arrested (although I should have been once at the age of 14 when I started that forest fire...accidentally, of course) and in time I grew out of my fascination for fire. I found that girls were much more interesting. Now I'm too old even for that.

William


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