page_title: Friedrich Gottlob Keller
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Friedrich Gottlob Keller / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: A photo of the original F.G. Keller wood grinding (wood-cut) machine (used for pulping wood for paper making).
context_page_description: Friedrich Gottlob Keller was a German machinist and inventor, who invented the wood pulp process for use in papermaking. He is widely known for his wood-cut machine. Unlike Charles Fenerty, F.G. Keller took out a patent for his wood-cut invention.
context_section_description: Keller spent his childhood and youth working for his father as a weaver and heddle-maker in Hainichen, Saxony (north-eastern Germany). But he was unhappy in this occupation since his interest was in machines. Keller carried with him an "idea-book", where he jotted down different kinds of machines. He had subscriptions to many of the leading publications on machines, and was well read in the sciences of mechanics. In his late years he recalled an article he read in his youth about the work of the French mathematician René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur. He took great interest in Réaumur's works and was curious about his efforts to find a method for making paper from trees. Réaumur himself never pursued the idea (later saying in 1742, "I am ashamed not yet to have tried this [paper making from trees] experiment since it is more than twenty years since I have realized the importance of it and since I have announced it."). It was an idea that stuck with Keller. In 1841 the 25-year-old Keller jotted down in his "idea-book" ideas for a wood-cut machine that could extract the fibres from trees for use in pulped-wood paper making.
caption: The F.G. Keller wood-grinding machine c.1854
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