The way we produce business documentation today bears almost no resemblance to the methods used when I entered international trade.
Today, an invoice can be prepared on a computer, corrected without leaving a trace, converted into a PDF and transmitted to several people around the world within seconds. Identical copies can be printed whenever required, and the electronic original can be stored, searched for and retrieved years later.
In the 1960s, producing export documentation was a considerably more physical—and sometimes exhausting—exercise.
When Fingers Powered the Office
Most typewriters in ordinary offices were still manual. Pressing a key operated a system of levers that propelled a metal typebar towards the paper. At the end of the typebar was a raised character which struck an inked ribbon and transferred the letter, number or punctuation mark onto the page.
There was no convenient menu of fonts, sizes or formatting choices. The typeface built into the particular machine was the one you used. Bold type was sometimes simulated by typing over the same words twice, while underlining meant returning to the beginning of the passage and repeatedly pressing the underscore key.
Corrections were equally unforgiving.
There was no backspace key that made an error disappear from the document. A mistake might be rubbed out with an abrasive eraser, painted over with correction fluid or corrected with special paper. Whatever method was chosen, the alteration usually remained visible—and documents presented under a letter of credit were not supposed to look as though they had been repeatedly repaired.
For important export documents, the safest remedy for a serious error was often to start the entire page again.
Seven Copies—and Six Sheets of Carbon Paper
The greatest difficulty arose when several copies of the same document were required.
There were no office printers capable of producing unlimited identical copies. Instead, sheets of carbon paper were inserted between the original and each additional sheet. Every keystroke had to pass through the inked carbon and make a legible impression on all the copies beneath it.
Export documentation frequently required a formidable number of copies.
Consider an invoice prepared for a shipment being paid for under a letter of credit. Copies might be required for:
- the customer;
- the customs authorities;
- the confirming bank;
- the issuing bank;
- our own company file;
- the overseas agent; and
- the regional manager.
That meant placing seven sheets of paper, separated by six sheets of carbon paper, into a manual typewriter.
Getting such a thick bundle around the typewriter platen was difficult enough. Producing a readable impression on the seventh sheet required the typist to strike every key with considerable force. Typing was not merely clerical work; it demanded strength, accuracy and stamina.
The first copy might appear sharp and professional. By the time the impression reached the sixth or seventh sheet, however, the characters could be faint, blurred and uneven.
There was also an extraordinary side effect.
The repeated impact of the typebars could cut through the centres of letters such as O, D, P, Q and R. When the completed set was removed from the typewriter and separated, tiny pieces of paper floated down onto the floor like confetti.
The document had been successfully produced, but parts of the alphabet had fallen out of it.
One Mistake Could Ruin Seven Copies
The typist also had to remember that one incorrect keystroke did not create one mistake. It created the same mistake on every copy.
Correcting the top sheet was comparatively simple. Correcting six carbon copies beneath it—each with a progressively fainter impression—was another matter entirely.
International trade documents demanded exact descriptions, quantities, weights, values, shipping marks, dates and letter-of-credit references. A typist could spend considerable time preparing a seven-copy document, reach the final line and then discover an error that required the entire set to be typed again.
That was why experienced export typists were so valuable. They were expected to be quick, accurate and familiar with the language of shipping and banking. They also had to interpret handwritten instructions that were not always as clear as their authors imagined them to be.
We Did Not Photocopy—We Xeroxed
“Why not type one original and photocopy it?” might be the obvious modern response.
Photocopiers existed, but early plain-paper machines were large and expensive. The first Rank Xerox copier to arrive in our office occupied approximately the space of two desks and was well beyond the purchasing reach of many smaller businesses.
Its arrival was treated as a major technological advance.
The Xerox name became so closely associated with the process that, in everyday office language, we did not say that we were going to photocopy a document. We said that we were going to Xerox it.
The Xerox 914, introduced in 1959, helped establish automatic plain-paper copying, but machines of that generation were substantial pieces of office equipment rather than the compact desktop printers and copiers familiar today.
Even after a copier arrived, it did not immediately solve every export-documentation problem. Banks and customs authorities could require signed originals rather than reproductions, while copies of faint carbon documents were not always especially clear. The typewriter, carbon paper and rubber stamp therefore remained essential office equipment for many years.
The Arrival of the Golf Ball
Electric typewriters gradually reduced the physical effort involved.
The most memorable was the IBM Selectric, commonly known as the “golf-ball” typewriter because it replaced the traditional basket of individual typebars with a spherical printing element. The ball rotated and tilted to bring the required character into position before striking the ribbon.
IBM had introduced the original Selectric in 1961, although machines of this kind became increasingly visible in British offices during the following years. Interchangeable type elements also made it possible to change typefaces without replacing the entire machine.
For the typist, it was a substantial improvement. The electric mechanism supplied the force required to strike the paper, so the operator no longer had to use their fingers like ten small hammers.
It also eliminated one familiar problem with manual typewriters. When two keys were struck too quickly, their typebars could rise together, collide and become jammed. The golf-ball mechanism had no forest of typebars waiting to become entangled.
Nevertheless, it remained a typewriter. It could not automatically produce seven pristine copies. Carbon paper was still needed, and a mistake could still be repeated through the entire set.
Word Processing Changes Everything
The real transformation began when personal computers and word-processing programs entered the office.
Early machines commonly operated under MS-DOS and displayed text against a largely black screen. They were frequently described as “IBM-compatible” computers because IBM’s personal-computer architecture had become an important business standard.
Programs such as WordPerfect allowed a document to be prepared, altered, saved and printed. For the first time, mistakes could be corrected before ink touched the paper. Paragraphs could be moved, wording changed and information inserted without retyping the entire document.
Most importantly for export departments, the printer could produce as many clean, legible copies as required.
The customer’s copy was as clear as the bank’s copy. The seventh copy no longer looked as though it had survived a minor industrial accident.
Documents could also be saved for later use. A previous invoice, packing list or standard letter could be retrieved, amended and issued for a new transaction. This eliminated hours of repetitive typing, although it introduced a new danger: forgetting to change some vital detail copied from the previous shipment.
Technology removed many old mistakes and created several new ones.
Floppy Disks and the Rise of Windows
The earliest programs and files were stored on floppy disks.
The dimensions are easily confused after so many years because several formats appeared in succession. Early eight-inch disks were followed by the widely used 5¼-inch floppy, measuring approximately 133 millimetres square. These were later largely replaced by the more robust 3½-inch disk, enclosed in a rigid plastic case approximately 90 millimetres square.
The smaller disk was still called “floppy” even though its outer casing was no longer flexible.
Microsoft Windows gradually replaced the command-line world of MS-DOS with a graphical environment of windows, menus, icons and a mouse. Windows 1.0 appeared in 1985, followed by Windows 2 and the much more successful Windows 3 generation. The naming later changed to Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP and the sequence of releases that eventually led to Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Installing software was not always a matter of clicking a button and allowing it to download.
A large program could arrive as a box containing a substantial pile of floppy disks. The user inserted the first disk, waited while part of the program was installed, removed it when instructed and inserted the next. This continued—sometimes through many disks—until the installation was finally complete.
Should one disk prove unreadable near the end, the entire process might be delayed or abandoned.
The Noisy Arrival of the Dot-Matrix Printer
The arrival of computers did not immediately mean the end of carbon paper.
Many early office computers were connected to dot-matrix printers. These were impact printers: a print head containing a row of small metal pins moved rapidly across an inked ribbon, striking the paper and building each character from a pattern of dots.
They were noisy machines. An office equipped with several of them could sound like a room full of mechanical insects, particularly when long invoices, packing lists or stock reports were being printed.
Dot-matrix printers were not especially elegant, and their output could look crude when compared with the sharp printing we now take for granted. Nevertheless, they offered an enormous practical advantage to export departments: because the pins physically struck the paper, they could print through several layers of continuous multi-part stationery.
This meant that an invoice or packing list could still be produced with several copies in one operation, but the typist no longer had to force seven sheets of paper and six loose carbon sheets into a manual typewriter. The printer pulled the continuous paper through automatically, guided by perforated strips along each side.
The copies were often produced on carbonless paper, with chemicals on the back and front surfaces transferring the impression from one layer to the next. Each copy could be printed in a different colour so that everyone knew which one belonged to the customer, the bank, the accounts department, the agent or the company file.
When printing was complete, the perforated side strips were torn away and the individual documents separated along the horizontal perforations.
Dot-matrix printers were slow, noisy and sometimes temperamental. Paper could become misaligned, perforations could tear, ribbons could fade and the tractor-feed mechanism could lose its grip. Yet they represented a major step forward. Information entered once into the computer could be printed repeatedly and consistently, while multi-part forms preserved the familiar distribution of copies required by shipping departments, banks, customs authorities and overseas agents.
For a time, therefore, the modern computer and the old carbon-copy principle worked side by side.
Laser and inkjet printers eventually produced quieter, faster and clearer documents, but they could not strike through multi-part paper. As electronic records, photocopies and emailed documents became more widely accepted, the need to produce several impact copies at once gradually disappeared.
Anyone who worked in an office during that transitional period, however, is unlikely to forget the sound of a dot-matrix printer announcing that another batch of documentation was on its way.
From WordPerfect to Microsoft Word
WordPerfect became one of the best-known word-processing programs of the DOS era. It was powerful, although many of its commands depended upon combinations of function keys that experienced users came to know almost instinctively.
Microsoft Word later became dominant in many business environments as Windows spread through the office. Documents became easier to format visually, printers improved, and eventually files could be attached to emails rather than printed, enveloped and posted.
I have worked through the whole development: from manual typewriters and carbon paper, through electric golf-ball machines, photocopiers, MS-DOS and WordPerfect, and onwards through successive generations of Microsoft Windows to Windows 11.
Each advance seemed remarkable at the time.
The first electric typewriter relieved the typist’s fingers. The photocopier reproduced a page. The word processor allowed it to be corrected before printing. The computer stored it. Email transmitted it. Cloud storage made it accessible from almost anywhere.
Today, much export documentation is produced electronically. Information can pass directly from an order-processing system into an invoice, packing list, customs declaration or shipping instruction. Documents can be digitally signed, transmitted instantly and shared simultaneously with customers, freight forwarders, customs agents and banks.
Yet the purpose has not changed.
The goods must still be correctly described. The quantities, weights, values and shipping details must still be accurate. A computer can reproduce an error far more quickly and efficiently than a typist with seven sheets of paper and six pieces of carbon.
Technology has transformed how documents are produced, but it has not removed the need for knowledge, care and judgement.
Who has a typewriter today?
Very few people—but anyone who prepared export documents in the 1960s or 70s is unlikely to forget them.
Enjoy more history of the Export department in the book The Export Adventurer.