Carbon sheet
Who all like white paper, who all like white ruled ( lined ) paper? I like both the plain white paper and ruled white paper. And also have a fondness towards carbon paper, which is not much used in schools in the present times. Even in the past times, it was not much used in schools, but used widely in government offices and in commercial establishments.
Before the xerox machine came into use, the duplicate had been made on a white paper, above which a carbon paper is kept and the original is either hand written or typed with the use of a typewriting machine. The one who used to do the type writing is known as 'typist' and the machine used for typing is known as 'typewriter'. Even though the name ' carbon sheet ' refers to varieties ranging from thin to thick sheets, and the ones we used were carbon papers, we used to call the carbon papers as carbon sheets only. Carbon sheet is impregnated with the paint on one side. An important thing to remember is the sheet must be kept in such a way that the carbon painted side must be on the second paper, which is going to be the duplicate.
It used to be a nice hobby to write something and making carbon copies. Sometimes, if you keep one more carbon paper plus white paper, two copies can be produced, but the impression of the writings or drawings on the second copy is little lighter. We used to see dark blue coloured carbon paper, and black coloured and light blue coloured occasionally. Now a days, white, yellow and red carbon papers are available.
The wooden framed black slate is the first writing platform for us. We never started writing in sand spread on floor at the beginning as some of the youngsters may think. The body of the slate- the writing square or little rectangular pad was made up of the material slate. Slate is derived from a metamorphic rock material. Because of this making material only it was named slate. I used to love this texture and the smooth writings on this black slate with slate pencil. Black coloured slate pencils were mostly used. The black colour pencil, on the black coloured slate writes in white colour! Later on there were multi coloured, soft pencils.
The eraser, which is made of rubber was called as 'rubber' only. Even some children used to pronounce as 'lubber'. We used to talk about some people calling 'rolly' instead of 'lorry' and 'wathroom' instead of 'bathroom'! Once, one of my classmate and I where to get separated - might be school summer holidays , she gave me a partly used rubber (I think), and asked me to keep that as her remembrance!!
The wooden scale ( long scale)- It would be available in two lengths . One foot and half foot.( 30 cm & 15 cm ). I always liked the one foot one. Teachers used the wooden scale also for the purpose of beating the students. ( But, in higher classes, the beatings were given by bamboo sticks. The irony is, we had to go to the bamboo growth ,select a correct size, break one and bring that to the classroom and we would not know who all would get a beat). At first, used to have dark teak brown coloured scales, those I liked better than the scales that came later on with mustard yellow colour.
And the ink. The basic black coloured ink is also made from carbon particles.Oh, this is the one important item through which the knowledge and the history were transported through times old. My father used to buy blue black coloured Camlin ink. Do you remember the small ink bottle made of glass, usually with blue coloured tin cap? Ink bottles are also called ' Ink wells'. We need to fill the ink into the fountain pen by means of a separate filler. Later on pens came which used to suck ink by themselves, and that solved the problems of spilling down and staining of fingers.
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