In any case, office reproduction began to grow very rapidly. (It may seem paradoxical that this growth coincided with the rise of the telephone, but perhaps it isn’t. All the evidence suggests that communication between people by whatever means, far from simply accomplishing its purpose, invariably breeds the need for more.) The typewriter and carbon paper came into common use after 1890, and mimeographing became a standard office procedure soon after 1900. “No office is complete without an Edison Mimeograph,” the Dick Company felt able to boast in 1903. By that time, there were already about
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