In the Graphotype process, commonly used commercially from the early 1900s through the 1980s, a debossing machine was used to stamp characters into metal plates; the plates could then be used to repetitively stamp such things as addresses onto paper in the same way that a typewriter functions, except that a single stroke of the printer could produce a block of text, rather than requiring each character to be printed individually. The debossing process creates durable, easily legible metal plates, well-suited for military identification tags, leading to adoption of the system by the American military. It was also realized that debossed tags can function the same way the original Graphotype plates do.