Spirit

Reprofax. ReproFX. Spirit. Colonial Converting. We use a lot of names, all of them in honor of over a half of a century of innovative products.

We started out in 1946 in Illinois, when Earl Bradley founded Colonial Converting Company. We manufactured office supply products like paper and typewriter ribbons. But it wasn't until the 1960s that the company found its calling- transfer paper.

Transfer paper was used around the world prior to computers as a cheap way of replicating documents. There were two steps to the analog transfer. The first was the "thermal transfer," the second the "spirit transfer." The "thermal transfer" copied the original document onto a master unit using a thermal copying machine- usually a 3M Thermofax. The "spirit transfer" used ethanol spirits and a machine to transfer the dye on the master unit onto the copies.