I want to know if there's a way to tell when a piece of paper was
manufactured.  Is there some sort of date that you can see on the
paper?  I'm referring to an 8 1/2 x 11 standard piece of paper.

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Clarification of Question by tyler_durden-ga on 10 Nov 2005 16:36 PST

The paper that I want to know about is not high quality.  It's
standard copier paper.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 10 Nov 2005 17:04 PST

You can possibly pinpoint the date to within a decade, based on the
tradename of the paper, but if you're looking for a given day or month
or even a year, I'd say it's pretty unlikely.

However, there may well be other clues as to date of a given document
if it has any text on it.

Can you give us a bit more context as to the situation here?

Thanks,

pafalafa-ga

Some papers have a date (usually the year of manufacture) as part of
the watermark. If the paper is high-quality stationery, this may be
the case.

The kids on CSI can examine a piece of paper and not only tell you
when it was made, but odds are it is an unusual type of paper carried
by only three stores in all of Nevada and only one of the stores is
anywhere near the vic's home, office, or school.

I tell ya, that show is getting more and more desperate.

For US paper I think there is some collaborative ID system in use but
I dont think it is mandatory. I have a book at work that has some
reference about this. Will check if for you  on Monday as I can not
remember the system.

HI I promised to come back to you re paper Identification. Normal
white photocopy paper can be fingreprinted  as the composition, wood
pulp, fillers and other pigments all produce a unique reference from
each supplier. Microscopic analysis can generally be used to limit
range of potential suppliers or eliminate forgeries if you have
suitable references.
The watermark in the paper is put in by the manufacturer and is
generally unique to the manufacturer and is often updated over the
years. However there is no legal requirement that dating/ traceability
if kept. Hence you can probably identify a particular piece of paper
to a particular manufacturer within a few years. Once you have that
the manufacturer in question may be able to provide more assistance to
refine the date as to when they last changed their watermark.
However, I would add that if there is any ink marks on the paper the
job maybe easier as the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms has a reference collection of more than 3000 ink
chromatograms which can be used to narrow an ink supply and possible
date.
Hope that helps.