It’s October 7th and on this day in 1806 carbon paper received its patent.

Ralph Wedgwood (1766-1837) was an English inventor. He came from a family of well-known pottery-makers. Wedgwood received British Patent 2972 for his “apparatus for producing duplicates of writings,” which he called the Noctograph or “Stylographic Manifold Writer.” As stated in the patent description, Wedgwood’s device produced duplications. The user would insert a piece of carbon paper in between two pieces of stationery. They’d then write with a metal stylus that produced a smudgy imprint of the writing onto the bottom sheet. Meanwhile, the top sheet would receive a mirror image on its underside. The paper itself became “carbonated” by a treatment process of soaking it in a mixture of pigment and oil.