The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-10-03

The paper you hold In your hand as
you read this is made of wood. 1t is
the product of ground-up or macer-
ated tree, and If you look very closely
you can see the wood fibers, like small
splinters, all through the paper. but
more discernable in the margins where
the printing does not cover the sur
face. And not only are all newspapers
made of wood-pulp. but so are almost
all other cheap papers. Book papers
are generally made from wood; so are
wallpapers. cheas writing papers
wrapping papers and variety OF
others. But the main use of wood
pulp paper is for printing. A clever
statistician has calculated how many
acres of forest go into a "best-seller.'
.by Winston Churchill. and the result
ant figures are appalling. especially
when one realizes that the wood used
is practically all of one kind. spruce.
found chiefly in the Northeastern
United States and in Canada.
Paper has always been made from
vegetable fiber. Material for receiving
printed or written characters have not
always been of paper: the Assyrians
used clay tablets, madiaeval Europe
used parchment made from sheepskin
But paper, by its very derivation from
the Egyptian "papyrus. the plant
from which the oldest known paper
was made, is of vegetable origin. and
is now made principally Of rags. wood
themselves being generally OF Gotten
or fax.
The demand for paper has made the
supply problem one that has grown.
and is growing rapidly. There has
never been an era like the present for
cheap printed matter. This is the day
of the newspapers; the newspaper uses
wood-pulp paper. The drain upon the
spruce forests is SO great that there
has been constant search for paper
material. Egypt has an ideal plant
for its own uses in the papyrus. Its
paper was not made by reducing the
plant to mass. and then spreading it
out into sheets by pressure. The stem
was split. the outer layers were peeled
off and their edges glued together to
form long sheets. The papyrus stems
also furnished material for sails. mats,
cloth and cords; the pith was used for
food; sandals were made OF a material
provided by papyrus. and the seams of
ships were calked with tow made
from it.
AS the word paper" comes from
the name of a paper-making plant, so
the word library" has a similar de-
rivation from the bark Qiber) of trees,
because books were once made on
sheets of bark. just as our American
Indians have put records on the pa
per-thin bark of the birch. Book"
comes from Anglo-SaXon boo" or
beech. since early Teutonic tribes
used the bark of that tree for writing
material.
The Eastern nations have used pa
pers for long time, the Chinese
and Japanese have made paper from
cotton. from straw and wood fibers,
including bamboo and many grasses;
the Polynesian islands make use of
tapa cloth and paper. made from the
paper mulberry.
When the Arabs captured the Won
derful city OF Samarkand. 704 a. D.,
they found people skilled in the
manufacture of paper from cotton. and
they in turn disseminated the art
throughout their empire. Their pro-
duct became known as "charta," which
has given name to card and to Char
ter The making of paper from cot
ton was common throughout Europe:
later linen rage and flax were used
Still the demand grew, and it became
necessary to search new fields and new
materials. Esparto. Spanish grass,
was finally decided on as the proper
material, and for many years it Was
used, and still is used. About 100000
tons are annually imported into Great
Britain for paper-making purposes.
though there is no present tendency to
increase the importation. Plain leaves,
cane. hopstalls. nettles. thistles,
ramic, peat and great many other
things have been tried. with indif-
ferent success. Bamboo fiber has
been used, but paper made from it is
not good for printing. because of hard
particles that quickly destroy type.
In 1915 the first important steps
were taken in the manufacture of pa
per from wood. In that year Keller
of Saxony took out patent for maxi
ing paper from pulp-wood His sue
cess led others to Investigate, until two
methods of obtaining paper-making
material from wood were devised, the
mechanical and the chemical process
Ses
Both are used in the United States.
The mechanical process is a simple
one, and consists merely of grinding
the wood with water until it is re-
duced to pulpy mass. The pulp mills
are situated near to the place where
the wood grows, and generally on 4,
good water-power SITE The product
OF the mechanical pulp mills is not
held to be as high grade as the chemi-
cal pulp, which is produced by quite
different process. giving a longer and
tougher fiber. For most cheap papers,
the mechanical pulp is used as basis,
with about one-third of chemical pulp
added to give strength and toughness.
The chemical processes are two.
One of them uses caustic soda and the
other sulphurous acid. to separate the
useless matter from the fiber. The
caustic soda process, which gives its
name to soda pulp, is used mainly for
poplar.
The plant of typical sulphite pulp
mill, situated near it's source of sup
ply. consists of a saw for cutting the
logs into size easily handled, a
wood-preparing. CT rossing room, in