Brief History

Invention of Paper

The word paper comes from the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus, which
was woven from papyrus plants. Papyrus was produced
as early as 3000 BCE in Egypt, and in ancient Greece
and Rome. Further north, parchment or vellum, made of
processed sheepskin or calfskin, replaced papyrus, as
the papyrus plant requires subtropical conditions to
grow. In China, documents were ordinarily written on
bamboo, making them heavy and awkward to transport.
Silk was sometimes used, but was normally too expensive to consider. Indeed, most of
the above materials were rare and costly.

Ts’aiLun

The Chinese court official Ts’aiLun described the modern method of papermaking in
AD 105; he was the first person to describe how to make paper from cotton rags. Other
sources trace the invention of this type of papermaking to China in
150 BCE.

It spread slowly outside of China; other East Asian cultures, even

after seeing paper, could not figure out how to make it themselves.
Instruction in the manufacturing process was required, and the
Chinese were reluctant to share their secrets.

The technology was first transferred to Korea in 600 and then imported to Japan around
610 by a Buddhist priest, Dam Jing from Goguryeo, where fibres (called bast) from the
mulberry tree were used.

Papermaking Technology
 After further commercial trading and the defeat of the Chinese in the Battle of
Talas, the invention spread to the Middle East, where it was adopted in India and
subsequently in Italy in about the 13th century. They used hemp and linen rags as a
source of fiber. The oldest known paper document in the West is the Missal of Silos from
the 11th century.

Some historians speculate that paper was the key element in global cultural
advancement. According to this theory, Chinese culture was less developed than the West
in ancient times because bamboo, while abundant, was a clumsier writing material than
papyrus. Chinese culture advanced during the Han Dynasty and preceding centuries due
to the invention of paper; and Europe advanced during the Renaissance due to the
introduction of paper and the printing press.

The Modern Papermaking Process

Paper remained a luxury item through the centuries, until the advent of steam-
driven papermaking machines in the 19th century, which could make paper with fibers
from wood pulp. Although older machines predated it, the Fourdrinier machine became
the basis for most modern papermaking.

In 1807, the
Fourdrinier papermaking
machine was patented in
France. This machine worked
by a continuous process: pulp
was fed onto a belt of wire
cloth that was continually
moving, so that the sheet was
left on the surface while the water drained through the wire.
 The paper was smoothed on rotating heated cylinders, or calendars, and on to the
reel. This was cut up into the appropriate length of sheets, which were then traditionally
counted into reams. The Fourdrinier brothers were able to increase their production
of paper ten-fold, from 60 to 100 lbs. per day by hand, to 1,000 lbs. per day using
their new machine. Fifty years after the mechanization of the process, the price of
paper had dropped by almost one half.

Together with the invention of the practical fountain pen and the mass-produced
pencil of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam-driven rotary
printing press, wood-based paper caused a major transformation of the 19th-century
economy and society in industrialized countries.

Before this era, a book or a newspaper was a rare luxury object, and illiteracy was
the norm. With the gradual introduction of cheap paper, schoolbooks, fiction, nonfiction,
and newspapers became slowly available to nearly all members of society. Cheap wood-
based paper also meant that keeping personal diaries or writing letters ceased to be
reserved to a privileged few. The office worker or the white-collar worker was slowly
born of this transformation, which can be considered as a part of the industrial revolution.

THE EVOLUTION OF PEN

Pencils

The earliest pencils date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who used flat
cakes of lead to mark faint black lines on papyrus (an early form of paper) to guide
writers. In the Middle Ages, people used thin rods of lead or silver for drawing. The
marking ability of graphite was discovered in the 1500’s, and the first modern pencil—
that is, one consisting of a wood case glued around a stick of graphite—was made in
the late 1700’s.

In 1795, Nicholas Jacques Conte, a French chemist, developed a pencil of

powdered graphite and clay. His mixture proved to be as smooth and hard as pure
graphite. Conte also discovered that a harder or softer writing core could be produced by
varying the proportions of clay and graphite.

In the mid-1800’s, William Monroe, a Massachusetts cabinetmaker, invented a

machine that cut and grooved wood slats precisely enough to make pencils. About the
same time, the American inventor Joseph Dixon developed the method of cutting single
cedar cylinders in half to receive the core and then gluing them back together. In 1861,
the first pencil-making factory in the United States was built in New York City by
Eberhard Faber, an American manufacturer. The first mechanical pencil was patented by
the Eagle Pencil Company in 1879.
As early as 4,000 B.C., ancient peoples used crude pens consisting of hollow
straws or reeds that supported a short column of liquid. During the 500’s B.C., people
began to make pens from the wing feathers of such birds as geese and swans. The shaft of
the feathers was hardened, and the writing tip was shaped and slit to make writing easy.
These feather pens were known as quill pens, and they were widely used until the
development of steel-nib pens in the 1800’s.

By the late 1800’s, inventors had perfected an early version of the fountain pen.
This pen represented a major improvement over previous pens, because it featured an ink
reservoir and a capillary feed. Earlier pens held only a small amount of ink at a time and
had to be repeatedly dipped in ink.

THE FIRST FOUNTAIN PEN

In 1883, L. E. Waterman, an insurance salesman, purchased a writing contraption

with its own ink reservoir. But when it leaked, ruining a sale, he got an idea for a better
one and decided to make it himself. In those days a salesman often wore a vest chain with
a small metal container holding a vial of ink in one pocket and a collapsible penholder in
the other. Waterman examined several so-called pocket pens and saw that none of them
had a mechanism for the sure control of ink flow. He determined to invent one. Applying
the principle of capillary attraction, he designed a feed with a groove for air intake and
three narrow slits in the bottom of the groove. As air bubbles interred, they pressed
against the ink in the barrel and the ink descended through the slits in a uniform flow to
the pen point.

This device was so novel the Patent Office granted a patent in 1884, only a few
months after the filing. Waterman claimed that his new mechanism would "prevent the
excessive discharge of the ink when the pen is in use." It was the first practical fountain
pen and its three-fissure feed became the standard principle for all other makes produced
thereafter.

Waterman started assembling his pens on a kitchen table in the rear of a cigar
store. In September of 1885 he started to advertise. After that Waterman’s Ideal rode the
road to fortune.

The Waterman Company (L. E. Waterman died in 1901.

The first Ball Point Pen

The first patent for a ball point pen was No. 392,046, granted October 30, 1888, to
John J. Loud of Weymouth, Mass. Loud used the pen to mark leather fabrics. Another
ball point pen device was patented by Van Vechten Riesburg in 1916. Both patents
lapsed without improvement renewal.

Ballpoint pens received little notice until World War 11(1939-1945). Many pilots
began using ballpoint pens during this conflict, because such pens did not leak at high
altitudes. After the war, ballpoint pens became increasingly popular. Soft-tip pens and
rolling-ball pens both were introduced during the 1960’s.

The first ball point pen to replace the then common "fountain pen" was introduced
by Milton Reynolds in 1945. It used a tiny ball bearing which rolled heavy gelatin ink
onto the paper. The Reynolds Pen was a crude writing instrument, but it sold like "hot
cakes" when first introduced at a price of $10, using the slogan "It writes under water."
Competition finally forced prices down to less than 10 cents for ball point pens by 1960.
By then the Reynolds pen had disappeared from the market place.

Questioned Document Examination

The history of questioned documents dates back to 3rd century A.D. However, scientific
document examination started around the 18th century. From the start of civilization,
Forgeries had been in use for violation of laws to change the seals, handwriting,
preparing official documents, signatures, etc.

The first case reported regarding the document examination was in the 3rd century.
During that time, Imperial Rome was famous for forgers. Titus and Anthony were the
famous and most skilled forgers of that time known for forging all kinds of documents.

There was a need to stop forgeries at that time and Roman Law mandated that the
procedures must be followed to detect forgeries in documents and the authenticity of
documents.

In the 6th century (around 539 AD), Justinian code was established by a Roman emperor
Justinian in which the guidelines for document examination were mandated. The
Justinian code made sure that a judge could ask a person with special skills to examine
the disputed documents and give testimony regarding the authenticity of a document.

During that time the experts were considered as master writers in France. every country
started to follow to detect forgeries and other document related crimes.

Photographers also considered themselves as handwriting experts during the 1890s after
the invention of photography because they had the advantage of analyzing handwriting
characteristics using cameras by enlarging the alphabets for comparison.
In a famous case, Alphonse Bertillon (inventor of Anthropometry) was also a
photographer and using the technology accused an army person of forgery which was
later challenged by the experts from the US and England.

After the challenge, the charges against the army officer were exonerated by the courts.

During the 1890s handwriting examination was common and two experts Hagen and
Frazer published a book on disputed documents.

During the 1900s, Albert Sherman Osborn wrote many articles related to typewriting
identification in 1901 before publishing a book titled “Questioned Documents”.

With some modifications in the first edition of the book, he published a new edition of
the book in 1929 which set a base for the examination of questioned documents as the
books are still in use.

Albert S. Osborn was named as the father of questioned documents due to his
contribution to the field of questioned documents. His other publications included The
problem of proof (1922), The mind of the Juror (1937) and Questioned document
problems (1944).

In 1942, ASQDE (American society of Questioned document examination) was

established with the main focus of education and research in the field of questioned
document examination.

ASQDE is still working and continuously contributing to the field of document

examination.

Please see the Timeline here:

https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/oles/MSSFHA-20130604-Osborn-
rev.pdf