
A London resident Ralph Wedgwood received a patent for “apparatus, making copies of the original recordings.” When examined in detail, the apparatus turned out to be a sheet of thin paper soaked in coloring liquid and dried between two sheets of blotting paper. The result was, according to Wedgwood, a “stylographic writer,” in the terminology of those years – “carbonic paper”, but in our opinion, just an ordinary carbon copy. The paper-pushers, exhausted by the wasting papers, heaved a sigh of relief. And just in a couple of years – well, that’s a relief – a typewriter was created. “Erica takes four copies...” – wrote a poet Alexander Galich. Just through the carbon copy invented by Wedgwood.