Paper making history
Summary:
Of all the writing materials mankind has employed down through the ages, paper has become the
most widely used around the world. Paper has a long history stretching back to ancient Egypt in
the third millennium BC.
The word ‘paper’ is derived from papyrus, a plant that was once abundant in Egypt.
Paper as we know it traces its roots back to China at the beginning of the first millennium AD.
Originally intended purely for writing and printing purposes, a dazzling array of paper products
are available to today’s consumer.
History:
105 AD:
Chinese Han Dynasty, the birthplace of paper as we know it today. Papermaking has traditionally
been traced to China Cai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court during the Han
Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), created a sheet of paper using:
Mulberry
Bast Fibres
Fishnets
Old Rags
Hemp Waste
However, the earliest piece of paper found, at Fangmatan in
Gansu province inscribed with a map, dates from 179-41 BC.
During the Shang (1600–1050 BC) and Zhou (1050-256 BC)
dynasties of ancient China, documents were ordinarily written
on bone or bamboo (on tablets or on bamboo strips sewn and
rolled together into scrolls), making them very heavy,
awkward, and hard to transport. The light material of silk was
sometimes used as a recording medium, but was normally too expensive to consider.
The Han dynasty Chinese court official Cai Lun (CA. 50–121) is widely regarded as the inventor
of the modern method of papermaking (inspired by wasps and bees) from rags and other plant
fibers in 105.
The manufacture may have originated from the practice of pounding and stirring rags in water,
after which the matted fibres were collected on a mat. The bark of Paper Mulberry was
particularly valued and high quality paper was developed in the late Han period, which used the
bark of tan. In the Eastern Jin period paper began to be made on a fine bamboo screen-mould,
treated with insecticidal dye for permanence. After printing became popular in the Shang
dynasty the demand grew more.
The first use of paper has been excavated in China dating to the reign of Emperor Wu of
Han from the 2nd century BC, used for purposes of wrapping or padding protection for delicate
bronze mirrors.
It was also used for safety, such as the padding of poisonous "medicine" as mentioned in the
official history of the period.
After its origin in central China, the production and use of paper spread steadily. It is clear that
paper was used at Dunhuang by AD 150, in Loulan in the modern-day province of Xinjiang by
200, and in Turpan by 399.
610 AD:
Paper was concurrently introduced in Japan sometime between the years 280 and 610.
Chinese paper was first introduced to Medieval India in the 7th century. However, the use of
paper was not widespread there until the 12th century.
Paper page fragment from a Coptic language Bible from Egypt in the Islamic period, 700s AD or
later
After the defeat of the Chinese in the Battle of Talas in 751 (present day Kyrgyzstan), the
invention spread to the Middle East.
The legend goes, the secret of papermaking was obtained from two Chinese prisoners from the
Battle of Talas, which led to the first paper mill in the Islamic world being founded
in Samarkand in Sogdia (modern-day Uzbekistan). There was a tradition that Muslims will release
their prisoners if they can teach ten Muslims any valuable knowledge.
There are records of paper being made at Gilgit in Pakistan by the sixth century, in Samarkand by
751, in Baghdad by 793, in Egypt by 900, and in Fes, Morocco around 1100.
The laborious process of paper making was refined and machinery was designed for bulk
manufacturing of paper.
Production began in Baghdad, where a method was invented to make a thicker sheet of paper,
which helped transform papermaking from an art into a major industry. The use of water-
powered pulp mills for preparing the pulp material used in paper making, dates back
to Samarkand in the 8th century, though this should not be confused with paper mills.
The Muslims also introduced the use of trip hammers (human- or animal-powered) in the
production of paper, replacing the traditional Chinese mortar and
pestle method. In turn, the trip hammer method was later employed
by the Chinese.
By the 9th century, Muslims were using paper regularly, although
for important works like copies of the revered Qur'an, vellum was
still preferred. By the 12th century in Marrakech in Morocco a street
was named "Kutubiyyin" or book sellers which contained more than
100 bookshops.
Paper manufacture was introduced to India in the 13th century by Muslim merchants, where it
almost wholly replaced traditional writing materials.
16th Century:
The advantages of mill-based papermaking spread throughout Europe in the 15th and 16th
centuries. In Germany, by the end of the 16th century there were 190 mills.
Work at the paper mill was typically carried out by a four man team:
The vatman (took the pulp from a vat and made the sheet using a mould).
The couch squirt (who worked in harmony with the vatman, placed the sheet on absorbent
felt).
The layman (who drew off the still moist sheets from the felt after pressing).
The apprentice (who had to feed
material into the vat and
maintained the heating of the
vat).
Up to nine reams (4,500 sheets)
of paper could be made in the
course of a working day of
around 13 hours.
17th & 18th Century:
A Hollander beater is a machine developed by the Dutch in 1680 to produce paper pulp from
cellulose containing plant fibers.
It replaced stamp mills for preparing pulp because the Hollander could produce in one day the
same quantity of pulp it would take a stamp mill eight days to prepare.
However, the wooden paddles and beating process of a stamp mill produced longer, more easily
hydrated, and more fibrillated cellulose fibers; thus increasing the resulting paper's strength.
The Hollander used metal blades and a chopping action to cut the raw material, resulting in
shorter cellulose fibers and weaker paper. Further,
the metal blades of the Hollander often introduced
metal contaminants into the paper as one metal
blade struck another. These contaminants often
acted as catalysts for oxidation that have been
implicated in foxing.
The initial model built, by J.N.L. Robert in 1798,
was the first flat-screen papermaking machine.
The design was further developed in England,
mostly by Donking and the Fourdrinier brothers.
Additionally, the French chemist Claude-Louis
Bertholett invented the chemical bleaching of
pulp in 1785. The French Revolutionaries were
probably the first to use really white paper.
19th Century:
Although cheaper than vellum, paper remained expensive, at least in book-sized quantities,
through the centuries, until the advent of steam-driven paper making machines in the 19th
century, which could make paper with fibres from wood pulp.
Although older machines predated it, the Fourdrinier papermaking machine became the basis for
most modern papermaking.
Then in the 1830s and 1840s, two men on two different continents took up the challenge, but from
a totally new perspective.
Both Friedrich Gottlob Keller and Charles Fenerty began experiments with wood but using the
same technique used in paper making; instead of pulping rags, they thought about pulping wood.
At about the same time, by mid-1844, they announced their findings. They invented a machine
which extracted the fibres from wood (exactly as with rags) and made paper from it. Charles
Fenerty also bleached the pulp so that the paper was white. This started a new era for paper
making.
By the end of the 19th-century almost all printers in the western world were using wood in lieu of
rags to make paper. The original wood-based paper was acidic due to the use of alum and more
prone to disintegrate over time, through processes known as slow fires.
20th Century:
Gradually, the paper production process became fully automated.
From the preparatory and pulp production stages through to the papermaking, use of fillers and
finishing (including the head box, wire section, pressing, drying, reeling, smoothing and
packaging).
The paper industry developed appropriate industrial plants (ground wood and chemical pulp
mills) in order to produce wood based paper on an industrial scale and to meet the demand for this
increasingly valued substitute for rags which was set to become the dominant raw material for
papermaking.
The second half of the 19th century was marked by the enlargement of the web width, an increase
in working speeds due to improvements to various machine parts. Machines were designed
specifically for particular paper and corrugated board products.
For example, the Yankee cylinder for tissue paper production.
The web working width grew from 85 cm (1830) to 770 cm (1930), while production speeds rose
from 5 m/min. (1820) to over 500 m/min. (1930).
In the past 50 years the rate of innovation in papermaking has increased rapidly. New materials
have been developed (using thermo-mechanical pulps, recovered paper and new fillers). New
sheet forming options and neutral sizing have been accompanied by a greater awareness and focus
on environmental impacts.
Innovation has also led to greater specialization by paper makers.
For example in the development of new paper grades such as LWC - lightweight coated paper
(mainly used in magazines, flyers and inserts such as coupons); and some paper groups have
acquired their own raw material supply and trading organizations.
21st Century:
Paper is an amazing product: it is renewable, clean and incredibly versatile. It continuously offers
new possibilities, applications and end-uses.
Paper can be impregnated, enameled, creped, waterproofed, waxed, glazed, sensitized, bent,
folded, twisted, crumpled, cut, torn, dissolved, molded and embossed.
Today, intelligent paper used in packaging allows us to see clearly if products are past their sell-
by date by changing color, printed electronic circuits can be used instead of traditional heavy
circuit boards, scratch and sniff books bring learning to life, radio identification tags allow
products to be traced at every stage, and even batteries can be made from paper.
What is sure is that the European pulp and paper industry will continue to change and adapt to
new market conditions, responding to consumer requirements, and moving closer to its vision of
integrated sustainability and competitiveness.
Paper mills have improved enormously from an environmental point of view (waste water,
emissions, etc.) as well as from an efficiency point of view.
