Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1883-01-10
PAPER MAKING.
An Interesting Sketch Of Ono of the Most
Useful of Arts.


the term paper, in the narrow sense,
Is limited to material manufactured
of rags or other vegetable fiber re-
duced to apulp, there can be no doubt
that the credit of the invention be-
longs to the Chinese. According to
some historians 1t was made in China
as early as the year 1876 B. G., while
according to others the introduction
of the fabric should not be placed ear
licr than the year 200 Of our era. 1t
is undisputed that four kinds of paper
have been made in China since the
later of these dates, and from that time
to our own there has been but little
change in the processes of manufac-
ture. These papers are known as rice,
silk, bamboo and bark. The first is
made from the pith of leguminous
plant, imported from India and from
the island of Formosa. The pith, hav-
ing been prepared of the length de-
sired for the sheet, is cut in a thin
slice, which is then tlattcned, pressed
and dried. This delicate material,
which is used for writing and printing,
as well as for painting, gets its name
not from the substance of which it is
composed, but from the sizing of rice
water which it receives. The so-called
silk paper of China is also mis-
homer, for it is made from cot
ton and linen rags, hemp, unmanufac-
tured cotton and the like, sometimes
mingled with wood pulp and bamboo
pulp, and possibly with little silk.
But silk rags could not by themselves
be reduced to pulp suitable for making
paper. The rags, cotton and hemp are
prepared by being cut and well washed;
they are then bleached, and bya macera-
ton of twelve days duration are con-
verified into a pulp. This is made into
balls weighing about four pounds,
which, after being saturated with
water, are spread upon frame with
reeds, and pressed under heavy weights.
The drying is completed by hanging
the sheets upon the wall of room and
the process is finished by coating them
with a gum sizing, and polishing them
with some smooth hard substance. The
sheets of this so-called silk paper,
which, as we have seen, is mainly cot
ton paper, are sometimes of very large
dimensions, reaching, for example,
twelve feet in length and in breadth.
OF the so-called bark paper we need
only say that it is made from the inner
bark of the smaller branches of
variety of the mulberry tree. This
bark is wrought into pulp, and then
nodded into sheets, which, after COM
preston and drying, form a material
which will take ink, though it is even
more delicate than the "rice paper"
The bamboo paper, as the name i'm
plies, is made from the fiber of the
bamboo plant reduced to apulp, which
is formed into sheets and subsequently
compressed and dried.
The art of paper making spread from
China throughout Central Asia, and it
was found there about the beginning
of the eighth century by the Saracens,
who brought it to Spain. The material
chiefly used by the Spanish Moors was
raw cotton, and the manufactured prod
uct was accordingly yellow and
brittle but about the close Of the
eleventh century some Christian Span
iards, who had learned the art of paper
making, substituted cotton rags, and
not long afterward made the further
Improvement of stamping the rags into
a pulp Ivy water power. BY the close
of the twelfth century cotton paper
had come into general use in Southern
and Western Europe, but as it was then
made it did not possess sufficient
strength or solidity for many purposes,
and by the close of the fourteenth cen
tury it was almost entirely superseded
by paper made Of hemp and linen rags.
1t was the introduction of this strong,
and yet reasonably cheap, linen paper
which gave powerful impulse to the
introduction of printing by means of
movable types.
Although it is known that a paper
mill existed in England toward the
close of the fifteenth century-there
is, indeed, some evidence of paper
making there as early as the
beginning of the fourteenth
it was long before the manu-
facture flourished in the island of
Great Britain, and it was not until
1890 that some Huguenot refugees who
had settled in England began the man
ufacture Of white writing paper. Nor
was it until the close of the eighteenth
century that the English fabrics were
equal to those of the continent. The
first paper mill in America was estab-
lished in 1890 by William Rcttinghuy-
sen (anglicized into Rittenhouse) and
William Bradford on a small stream
near Philadelphia, still called Paper
Mill Run. The second paper mill in
the United States was built at Crefeld,
now a part of Germantown, and in
l72S the third paper mill in Pennsyl-
vania was was erected by some appren-
tees of Rittenhouse. BY 100 there
We're in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and
Delaware then the chief seats of the
paper manufacture-forty mills, whose
annual product was valued ut $780,
600. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and
Connecticut had five paper mills be-
tween them, and in New York there
were at least two. Before the Revo-
lutionary war American paper was
usually made of linen rags. Every
household in the Northern colonies
then spun and wove linen from the flax
grown upon almost every farm, and it
was used for the purposes for which
cotton is now chiefly employed. After
the Revolution paper mills multiplied,
and at present the number of paper
and pulp factories in the United States
is l,040. The principal seat of the
American paper manufacture is now
in the four western counties of Mas
sachusetts, a region whose tlourishing
cities and towns are largely dependent
m this inlustr ~ for their DrOSDerity