When 1960s futurists pondered what tomorrow would look like, they pictured a magical place called "the paperless office." Computers, humming 24 hours a day, would free people from paperwork's drudgery.

Forty years later, the computers have become a workplace staple. And Americans have readily adopted such paperless innovations as online banking and electronic tax filing — up from 3.7 percent of filers in 1990 to 53.4 percent this year.

But paper has remained an enduring part of the scene.

"The paperless office remains a myth," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director for JupiterResearch, a New York-based firm that tracks technology's impact on businesses. "We have a love affair with paper that won't go away anytime soon."

Indeed, companies that help manage the never-ending flow of paper are booming.

At Douron Corporate Furniture, based in Owings Mills, Md., sales of file cabinets "remain unabated" said Byran Simmons, the company's executive vice president.

Douron is doing a brisk business in high-density, movable storage units, which pack more records into the same amount of space than fixed shelves. Last year, the company sold 10 of these systems, which retail for $30,000 and up. The number is up to 20 so far this year, Simmons said.

Iron Mountain Inc. is a global document storage and record management company with 700 storage facilities around the world. The company stores about 300 million cubic feet of paper, a number that has been growing by between 7 percent and 8 percent a year, said Kenneth Rubin, senior vice president for corporate marketing.

"We'll see the paperless office when we see the metric system in this country," Rubin said.

E-mail does allow for the instantaneous exchange of data, but many workers still print out paper copies because they find them easier to read. While many documents are transmitted online, companies still keep paper copies in case their computer system crashes.

Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, in Rockland, Del., has moved its outpatient record-keeping online, no longer making duplicate paper records. Instead of handwriting notes in a patient's chart, doctors and nurses make their entries online.

With 316,000 outpatient visits last year to the hospital and its nine clinics, the paperwork reduction has been stunning, said Mary Zier, the hospital's director of health information management.

Two workers used to spend four hours a day pulling the 800 outpatient charts needed on a typical day. Now, "we don't pull charts because there aren't any," Zier said. "They're all online."

Zier estimates the hospital has cut its paper consumption by 75 percent, and since it no longer opens paper files for new outpatients, it has reduced the number of closed files that need to be sent off-site for storage. In a typical year, it would send between 5,000 and 10,000 files to storage. So far this year, the number is less than 300, Zier said.

The Wilmington, Del., office of Fish & Richardson, a national intellectual property law firm, is also trying to push back the tide of paper. The office's lawyers file many of their patent applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office electronically.

"I can't remember the last thing I could have filed electronically that I didn't," said Gwilym Attwell, one of the firm's principals, who handles patent applications for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

Still, the firm keeps backup paper copies of its patent applications, e-mails and other documents — "the fail-safe to the fail-safe," Attwell said.

That means a crowded in box on file clerk Teresa Church's desk. On a recent morning, it held a stack of documents more than a foot high waiting to be filed — about a typical day's worth.

"We have an electronic database, but the paper still comes in," Church said. "Sometimes the piles are higher than that."