It is the conclusion now accepted generally that the Chinese made and
used paper for writing purposes from a remote period of the past--from
before the beginning of the Christian Era. "The Chinese are credited
with the discovery of the art of paper-making by the use of fibers
reduced in water to a pulp. Their raw materials were the inner bark of
the mulberry tree, bamboo, rice straw, rags, etc."[29]
Paper was distinguished from the papyrus in that the substances from
which it was made were not used in their natural state, as the papyrus
was, but were manufactured from the raw material which was first
reduced to a pulp, then disposed in sheets, and subsequently finished
for use. In lapse of time many different kinds of substances were
employed as raw material or the basis of the finished product. At the
Paris Exhibition in 1889, a paper-maker showed more than sixty webs,
or rolls, of paper, each made from a different vegetable fibre: and
sample-books have been published which were composed of several hundred
leaves, all of different fibre.[30]
It is somewhat the "irony of fate" that no account of the origin of
paper has been reliably recorded. Much of the reputed history of
the art, or the invention, is only conjectural. The fact is that,
however remote the time and place of its beginning, paper first became
available to the world of letters in the eighth century. The Arabs,
having acquired the art of making it from China (through Chinese
prisoners, it is said) brought its manufacture into Arabia in the
eighth century and, later, carried it into Europe by way of northern
Africa. The comparatively large number of Arab manuscripts, preserved
from the ninth century, is evidence of the extent to which paper was
adopted and used for their literary, scientific, and religious records.
The Moors by their conquest of Spain in the eighth century brought
their civilization and its benefits into western Europe and, at a later
time--at about the twelfth century--introduced the manufacture of paper
therein. The industry spread, later, from Spain into Italy and Sicily,
and came eventually into the hands of the Christians, under whose less
skillful manipulations it suffered deterioration in quality. At a still
later date, its manufacture extended into southern and western Germany
and into the Netherlands, England, and France.
_Cotton_ paper was first manufactured from the natural product; but
later, as the industry was extended to regions where cotton was not
grown and into which it was not imported, other substances were used
instead of the raw cotton. "In Spain," it is said, "flax was the first
material used, then cotton." The practice of mixing rags--first woolen,
then cotton, and later linen--gradually came into use. Near the close
of the eleventh century (1085) is designated as the date when rags were
first used for paper in Spain; linen paper appeared in 1100. "From
the time rags began to be used in Europe they rapidly displaced other
materials on account of the double use of the fibre composing them
(used first for clothing or domestic purposes). Rags held sway in the
paper industry for many centuries, but not entirely to the exclusion of
numerous other materials."[31]
_Linen_ paper, though known much earlier, came into general use in the
fourteenth century. It was manufactured not only in response to the
demand for improvement which characterizes all inventions but because
linen was then less expensive than cotton. The earliest existing
document on paper is a deed of King Roger of Sicily, 1102 A. D. There
are other documentary records of Sicilian kings during the twelfth
century. "The manufacture of paper from linen rags," says Thalheimer,
"was a humble but essential antecedent to the art of printing, for
the costliness of parchment or vellum was as effectual a barrier to
the multiplication of books as the labor of transcribing them." Even
before the Christian Era, the cost of books was largely the cost of
the material--papyrus--upon which they were mostly written. Mr. Putnam
suggests that "if printing had come into Europe in the first century,
the world might to-day be buried under the accumulated mass of its
literature"--no, not unless the invention of paper had been coterminous
or had preceded.
All other and earlier materials for the embodiment and preservation
of literature were eventually superseded by the manufacture of paper.
Concerning the displacement of other materials, there is good authority
for the claim that "in the second half of the fourteenth century the
use of paper for all literary purposes had become well established in
all western Europe; and in the course of the fifteenth century it had
gradually superseded vellum. In manuscripts of this latter period it
is not unusual to find a mixture of vellum and paper, a vellum sheet
forming the outer and inner leaves of a quire while the rest are of
paper."[32]
And thus the invention of paper and the successive improvements in its
quality consequent upon the improved methods of its making, prepared
the way for the printing-press--an invention the importance of which
is beyond estimate and the relation of which to literature baffles
comparison. But the manufacture of paper, notwithstanding the fact that
it has shared in many and important improvements, continued to be made
laboriously by hand up to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The manufacture of paper has now reached a stage, it would almost seem,
of unimprovable excellence. In what is known as the "India" paper there
is combined, to a superlative degree, the paper-maker's science with
the artist's skill. It is called "India" paper "owing to the prevailing
tendency to describe as 'Indian' everything coming from the Far East,"
whence it was brought to England as early as 1841. This paper is not
only thin and light but also tough and strong and has an opacity which
makes it ideal for the printing of books (especially the Bible) where
it is desirable to reduce the weight and bulk without diminishing the
size of type or sacrificing beauty of typography and serviceability.
It combines maximum durability and capacity with minimum dimensions
and weight. Two facts will illustrate the foregoing observation: (1)
There is an edition of the Bible, containing the Authorized Version
complete in every particular, reduced within the dimensions of one and
a-quarter, seven-eighths, and one-half an inch--or a little less than
fifty-five one-hundredths of one cubic inch. It is hardly necessary to
say that it can be read only by the aid of a magnifying lens. (2) And
in an advertising booklet setting forth the excellencies of an edition
of the Encyclopedia Britannica there is given a remarkable test of the
capacity of the India paper to endure severe usage. A sheet from a
volume was folded in strips and tied in knots, drawn through a lady's
finger ring, crumpled into a tight ball, then opened out and ironed to
its original state of finish.
The tests to which the "India" paper was subjected at the Paris
Exposition in 1900 also show its most remarkable capacity. In those
tests a volume of 1,500 pages was suspended for several months by a
single leaf as thin as tissue and, at the close of the exhibition, it
was found that the leaf had not started, the paper had not stretched,
and the volume closed as well as ever. A strip of this paper, three
inches wide, sustained a weight of twenty-eight pounds before yielding.
This indicates its extreme tensile capacity. By the use of this
paper a book of a thousand pages may be brought within the limits of
three-quarters of an inch in thickness--the paper being of such degree
of opaqueness as to make possible a beautiful typography on both
sides of the sheet and of such strength and durability as to sustain
long continued use. The following is a publisher's advertisement of
a teacher's Bible: "Printed on genuine India paper, which measures
only five-eighths of an inch to 1,000 sheets, making a beautiful,
light-weight, convenient book." The fine editions of the Bible (for use
and not as a curiosity of the printer's art) and the great Encyclopedia
Britannica, printed on India paper are conspicuous examples and embody
both the paper maker's science and the printer's art.