Paper has been traced to China in
about AD 105. It reached Central Asia by 751 and Baghdad by 793, and by the
14th century there were paper mills in several parts of Europe. The invention
of the printing press in about 1450 greatly increased the demand for paper, and
at the beginning of the 19th century wood and other vegetable pulps began to
replace rags as the principal source of fiber for papermaking.
The word paper is derived from the
name of the reedy plant papyrus, which grows abundantly
along the Nile River in Egypt. In ancient times, the
fibrous layers within the stem of this plant were removed, placed side by side,
and crossed at right angles with another set of layers similarly arranged. The
sheet so formed was dampened and pressed. Upon drying, the gluelike sap of the
plant, acting as an adhesive, cemented the layers together. Complete defibring,
an indispensable element in modern papermaking, did not occur in the
preparation of papyrus sheets. Papyrus was the most
widely used writing material in ancient times, and many papyrus records still
survive.
Papermaking can be traced to about AD 105, when Ts'ai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court of China, created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste. In its slow travel westward, the art of papermaking reached Samarkand, in Central Asia, in 751; and in 793 the first paper was made in Baghdad during the time of Hārūn ar-Rashīd, with the golden age of Islāmic culture that brought papermaking to the frontiers of Europe.
The use of paper was introduced
into Europe by the Moors, and the first papermaking mill was established in
Spain about 1150. In succeeding centuries, the craft spread to most of the
European countries. The introduction of movable type about the middle of the
15th century made book printing practical and greatly stimulated papermaking.
The first paper mill in England was established in 1495, and the first such
mill in America in 1690.
By the 14th century a number of paper mills existed in
Europe, particularly in Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. The invention of
printing in the 1450s brought a vastly increased demand for paper. Through the
18th century the papermaking process remained essentially unchanged, with linen
and cotton rags furnishing the basic raw materials. Paper mills were
increasingly plagued by shortages; in the 18th century they even advertised and
solicited publicly for rags. It was evident that a process for utilizing a more
abundant material was needed.
The increasing use of paper in the 17th and
18th centuries created shortages of rags, which were the only satisfactory raw
material known to European papermakers. As a result, many attempts were made to
devise substitutes, but none was commercially satisfactory. At the same time,
attempts were made to reduce the cost of paper by developing a machine to
supplant the hand-molding process in paper manufacture. The first practical
machine was made in 1798 by the French inventor Nicholas Louis Robert. Robert's
machine was improved by the British stationers and brothers Henry Fourdrinier
and Sealy Fourdrinier, who in 1803 produced the first of the machines that bear
their name. The solution of the problem of making paper from cheap raw material
was achieved by the introduction of the groundwood process of pulp making about
1840 and the first of the chemical pulp processes approximately ten years
later.
(Adapted from Britannica Encyclopedia and Encarta Encyclopedia)
