Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1881-11-22
WEEKLY CHRONICLE.
THE HISTORY OF PAPER.

etc., the matter to be preserved or com
This was the common
method of Egypt at the time OF the exc
dus of the children of Israel. Stamped
upon q clay cylinder, an Assyrlan ac-
count of the deluge has been found, and
a similar cylinder in the museum OF the
East India Company contains portion
of the annals or DEGREES Of Nebuchad-
nezzar.
According to authorities, papyrus,
reed which could be unroIled into I
sheets, began to be Of use as paper b /
951 years before Christ, and thencefor-
ward, for 5000 years OF more, papyrus
was the only paper. The prophet Isa-
iah speaks of this material when he says
in chapter xix, "The paper reeds by
the brooks and everything sown by the
brooks shall wither, be driven away and
be no MORE" prophecy that has been
literally fulfilled, Tor the papyrus plant,
once abundant enough to be the worlds
only paper, is found 10 more anywhere.
The use of parchment began 200 years
before Christ, and had this origin:
Ptolemy Ill, of Egypt, heard that II
val King was beginning the formation Of
a library TO equal his, which consisted
OF thousands OF volumes Of books written
on papyrus. To prevent the success Of
the rival, Pt0lemy stopped the exporta-
ton of papyrus. The rival then had
recourse to parchment, the prepared
skins of animals, and thus parchment
came into use. AS late, however, as
the twelfth century, papyrus was used,
a Popal bull, dated 975, written or
papyrus, being, until 1871, in the NEu-
scum Of the Louvre, Paris. The books
of ancient Rome were written on papy-
rus by slaves educated fer this business.
Europe learned the art of papes-mah
ing from the Saracens, or Arabs. the
seventh century, and they probably
learned it from the Chinese. The pro.
cess that the Saracens brought to Spain
after their conquest in 704 had been in
vogue IN China over l 900 years. The
process was simply beating to pulp, III
mortars, Of vegetable fiber, aud then
driving it in sheets. The Chinese make
paper the same way to-day, as they are
opposed to the use Of labor, saving ma
chinery. The only machine admitte,,
to the FIowery Kingdom is the Yankee
sewing machine.
The use of paper for documents began
about the tenth century. The use OF
rags for paper-making began in the
eleventh century, prior to that cotton,
flax, ETC., being used. The earliest rec
ord of the building of mill for paper
making is 1870, the mill being erected
in Germany. The mill was, however,
only for reducing the fiber to pulp by
stamps run by water power, and was>n
no way like our modern mills. In 1888
a German made such good paper that
| Queen Elizabeth knighted him and gave
him aTmonopoly of gathering rags in the
kingdom for ten years The real value
Of paper-making began to be best appre-
ciatea when the art Of printing was dis
covered in the fifteenth century. Had
/ printing been discovered earlier there
would have been little use for it. as
neither the bark nor straw paper of the
| Chinese, the papyrus OF the Egyptians,
nor the parchment of the Greeks would
have been sufficiently plentiful for the
demands of the printing press. Ger
many, using cotton, fax and rags, and
/ her water and wind power for their re-
duction to pulp and fiber, was ready for
the printer and his press, and these
made possible the Reformation.
The rag engine, by which the law ma
terial is reduced to pulp, is & German
invention Jess than 200 years old. As
late as 1856, i'll this land of ingenious
workmen, rags were reduced to pulp by
stamps or in mortars. In 1898, Louis
Robert, Of France, invented the so-called
Fourdrinier machine He had so little
encouragement at home that he took his
invention to London, where lie interest
/ ID The Fourdrinirr brothers, wealthy
stationers, in his work. IL 1904 these
Fourdriniers purchased the patents and
experimental with them at a cost of
$500, 600. Their experiments ended in
the present Fourdrinier machine of ou1
mllis-a machine that has made possible
the enormous paper industry of the
world, an industry of which Pliny wrote
l,SOO years ago: ''All the usages Of civ
lllzed life depend in a remarkable de.
gree upon the employment Of paper.
The brothers Fourdrinior roaped no ad
vantage from their ingen ton. They
spent their entire fortune and died il
poverty, the eldest in 1856, aged 81
years.
The first paper-mill in the United
States was established in Germantown
IA, IN 1890. The first paper company
Iii Massachusetts was granted q paten
IN HIS. The mill was started in Mil
ford in 1870. 1t was run with variet
success for some years, and then ceased
operations. In 1850 Bostonian got .
furlough for an English soldier who un
derstood paper making, and the mill wa
again started. In 1915 the Legislature
passed resolutions for the appointment
of suitable persons in each town TO re
ceivo rags, and the people OF the Stat
were urged to save their rags for pape
making. In 1873 Zenas Crane, of Wor
cester, iourneyed to Dalton, and there
began the business which his sons aa(
Grandsons are still engaged in in the
same town; and his fellow pioneer