Invention of Copy machines by Curtis Kelly

Part 3

  You know, we didn't have copy machines until the 1960's and '70's. So, just 40 years ago, to make copies, you had to type something and send it to a printing company to photograph and print like a book. Well, there was a quicker way to make copies. You could use a machine called a mimeograph. But that means you had to write something on paper, no pictures, you had to use these messy chemicals to make these really ugly copies in blue, and the copies were wet, too, so you'd have to dry them. Or another way you could make copies would be to use something called carbon paper. You know, it's like that black paper when you fill in a form, like when you are sending something at the post office or whatever, when you write your address. Anyway, you put this dirty black paper between two sheets of white paper, and whatever you typed on the top piece of paper would get pressed into the one below, too. That way, you can copy, you can make two copies of something you typed.
  Anyway, it was hard. It was messy, and it was not unusual in companies to have a typist type a copy of a report for each person who was going to be at a meeting.