> NCR is ideal for business forms produced in large quantities, but is not economical for small applications. Consequently, it has yet to replace carbon paper c

> NCR is ideal for business forms produced in large quantities, but is not economical for small applications. Consequently, it has yet to replace carbon paper completely. There were also "carbon-less" multipart paper/forms that were economical for low-volume business use. Most common I recall: 8.5x11" blank tractor-fed computer paper, two layers of paper, "invisible" perforations for tearing away the tractor hole parts from the sides, which also held together 2 sheets of paper with with a coating that transferred impact to the front sheet to also mark the rear one. Could be used with even an inexpensive 9-pin home-grade printer. But shortly after you got computers in the loop, unless the business process really needed multiple copies of paper coming out at the same time, it was probably better to just use the flexibility of the computer. Example: if you're printing an invoice for a customer, from the computer, you can access that data and reproduce that invoice at any time, so don't need to generate more paper waste and handling cost with more expensive carbon/carbonless forms. Computers were phased into business processes, even when everywhere used a computer to some extent, which extended the life of carbon paper. When I worked as a young teen for a computer retailer&wholesaler, the polymath owner whipped up a bespoke multi-user system for invoices/quotes, inventory tracking, and customer database, which ran on a Seattle Computer Gazelle. But we shipped several UPS packages a day, which wasn't volume enough to justify computer integration with UPS. So, every day, I did the shipping packing and paperwork (precious time away from sales floor commissions), and I had to painstakingly hand-write all the info (address, COD, insurance, etc.). Into the tiny little lines of a page of the book, pressing hard enough to get a legible carbon copy that we'd retain. I'd also have to hand-write any additional stick-on forms (COD, overnight, insurance maybe, etc.), and then tear off the top carbon sheet from the book, and hand it to the UPS driver when they arrived. From there, there'd be a mix of computerization and manual paper processes, including part of the Cash On Delivery tag physically being torn off as a record, when the UPS driver received a check from package recipient and handed over the package. Carbon paper served its purpose at the time, but I'm glad it's all but dead. I still occasionally use paper. For example, last week, to hand over a printout of a confirmation Web page for an in-person event, since the previous time it took them 5 minutes of asking me information and looking it up in their computer. (To show them on my phone instead, I would've had to be sure to have the same information accessible on my phone, and handed over my phone, and it wouldn't be as legible to them, and they'd get their cooties on my phone, if they didn't drop, steal it, or start snooping on it. The paper just got propped agains their keyboard and side of monitor, as they typed in.)