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THE STORY OF
PAPER-MAKING
[Illustration: A MODERN PAPER-MILL]
THE STORY OF
PAPER-MAKING
AN ACCOUNT OF PAPER-MAKING
FROM ITS EARLIEST KNOWN RECORD
DOWN TO THE PRESENT TIME
_ILLUSTRATED_
J. W. BUTLER PAPER COMPANY
CHICAGO :: :: :: MDCCCCI
COPYRIGHTED
BY J. W. BUTLER PAPER COMPANY
JANUARY, 1901
THE ABSENCE OF NON-TECHNICAL WORKS UPON THIS INTERESTING
SUBJECT PROMPTS THE AUTHORS TO PRESENT A TREATISE FROM THE
STANDPOINT OF THE LAYMAN, AND FOR HIS USE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ARTICLES SUPPLANTED BY PAPER 1
II. PAPYRUS AND PARCHMENT 12
III. ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF PAPER 20
IV. EARLY METHODS OF PAPER-MAKING 49
V. MODERN PAPER-MAKING 55
VI. WATER-MARKS AND VARIETIES OF PAPER 95
VII. EXTENT OF THE BUSINESS IN THE UNITED STATES 123
PREFACE
It is a rare privilege to stand as we do at the meeting-point of
the centuries, bidding a reluctant farewell to the old, while
simultaneously we cry “All hail!” to the new; first looking back over
the open book of the past, then straining eager eyes for a glimpse
of the mysteries that the future holds hidden, and which are to be
revealed only moment by moment, hour by hour, and day by day.
The nineteenth century, so preëminently one of progress in almost every
line of mental and material activity, has witnessed a marvelous growth
in the paper industry. It was in the early years of the century that
crude old methods, with their meager machinery, began yielding to the
pressure of advanced thought, and the development since has kept full
pace with the flying years. The hundred years that have written the
modern history of paper-making mark also the period during which the
J. W. BUTLER PAPER COMPANY, or its immediate predecessors, have been
associated with the industry in this country. It has therefore seemed
to the present representatives of the company that the closing year of
the century was an especially fitting time to put into story form the
history of the wonderful and valuable product evolved almost wholly
from seemingly useless materials, and they consider it their privilege,
as well as the fulfillment of a pleasant obligation, to present this
account to their friends and associates in the paper, printing, and
auxiliary trades. We
“Know not what the future hath
Of marvel and surprise,”
but we feel confident that the incoming century will bring changes and
improvements as wonderful as any the past has wrought, and we hope
that it may be our good fortune to in some measure be instrumental in
promoting whatever tends to a greater development of the industry with
which our name has been so long associated.
J. W. BUTLER PAPER COMPANY.
CHAPTER I
ARTICLES EARLY USED FOR PURPOSES NOW SUPPLIED BY PAPER
Full of dignity, significance, and truth is the noble conception which
finds expression in Tennyson’s verse, that we are the heirs of the
ages, the inheritors of all that has gone before us.
♦We are the heirs of the ages♦
Through countless cycles of time men have been struggling and aspiring;
now “mounting up with wings, as eagles,” now thrown back to earth by
the crushing weight of defeat, but always rising again, undaunted
and determined. “The fathers have wrought, and we have entered into
the reward of their labors.” We have profited by their striving and
aspiration. All the wisdom of the past, garnered by patient toil and
effort, all the wealth of experience gained by generations of men
through alternating defeat and triumph, belongs to us by right of
inheritance. It has been truly said, “We are what the past has made us.
The results of the past are ourselves.”
♦Tradition untrustworthy♦
But to what agency do we owe the preservation of our inheritance?
What conservator has kept our rich estate from being scattered to
the four winds of heaven? For the wealth that is ours to-day we are
indebted in large measure to man’s instinctive desire, manifested in
all ages, to perpetuate his knowledge and achievements. Before the
thought of a permanent record had begun to take shape in men’s minds,
oral tradition, passing from father to son, and from generation to
generation, sought to keep alive the memory of great achievements and
valorous deeds. But tradition proved itself untrustworthy. Reports were
often imperfect, misleading, exaggerated. Through dull ears, the spoken
words were received into minds beclouded by ignorance, and passed on
into the keeping of treacherous memories. As the races advanced in
learning and civilization, they realized that something more permanent
and accurate was necessary; that without written records of some sort
there could be little, if any, progress, since each generation must
begin practically where the preceding one had begun, and pass through
the same stages of ignorance and inexperience.
♦Hieroglyphic records♦
In this strait, men sought help from Nature, and found in the huge
rocks and bowlders shaped by her mighty forces a means of perpetuating
notable events in the histories of nations and the lives of
individuals. From the setting up of stones to commemorate great deeds
and solemn covenants, it was but a step to the hewing of obelisks, upon
which the early races carved their hieroglyphs, rude pictures of birds
and men, of beasts and plants. As early as four thousand years before
Christ, these slender shafts of stone were reared against the deep blue
of the Egyptian sky, and for ages their shadows passed with the sun
over the restless, shifting sands of the desert. Most of the ancient
obelisks have crumbled to dust beneath Time’s unsparing hand, but a few
fragmentary specimens are still in existence, while the British Museum
is so fortunate as to be in possession of one shaft of black basalt
that is in perfect condition. A part of it is covered with writing,
a part with bas-reliefs. In Egypt these hieroglyphs were employed
almost exclusively for religious writings--a purpose suggested by the
derivation of the word itself, which comes from the Greek, _ieros_, a
priest, and _glypha_, a carving.
♦Inscriptions on stone and clay♦
As the obelisk had taken the place of the rude stones and unwieldy
bowlders which marked man’s first effort to solve an ever-recurring
problem, so it in turn was superseded. The temples were sacred places,
and especially fitted to become the repositories of the records that
were to preserve for coming generations the deeds of kings and priests.
Accordingly, the pictured stories of great events were graven on stone
panels in the temple walls, or on slabs or tablets of the same enduring
material. Then came a forward step to the easier and cheaper method
of writing on soft clay. The monarchs, not being obliged to take into
consideration questions of ease or economy, continued to make use of
the stone tablets, but private individuals usually employed clay,
not only for literary and scientific writings, but in their business
transactions as well. A careful baking, either by artificial heat or
in the burning rays of a tropic sun, rendered the clay tablets very
enduring, so that many which have been dug from ancient ruins are now
in a remarkable state of preservation, bearing letters and figures as
clear as any of the inscriptions on marble, stone, or metal that have
come to us from the splendid days of Greece or Rome. The people of
Assyria and Chaldea recorded almost every transaction, whether public
or private in character, upon tablets of clay, forming thus a faithful
transcript of their daily lives and occupations, which may be read
to-day by those who hold the key; thus it is we bridge the gulf of
centuries. From the ruins of ancient Nineveh and Babylon, records of
almost every sort have been unearthed, all inscribed on indestructible
terra-cotta. There are bank-notes and notes of hand, deeds of property,
public records, statements of private negotiations, and memoranda of
astronomical observations. The life in which they played a part has
passed into history; the once proud and mighty cities lie prostrate,
and upon their ruins other cities have risen, only to fall as they
fell. The terra-cotta to which they committed their records is all that
is left, and the tablets that were fashioned and inscribed so long ago
give to us the best histories of Chaldea, Babylonia, and Assyria.
♦Assyrian, Babylonian and Chaldean records♦
One of the largest collections of these clay-writings is now in the
British Museum and was taken from a great edifice in Assyria, which was
probably the residence of Sennacherib. Several series of narratives
are comprehended in the collection; one referring to the language,
legends, and mythology of the Assyrians; another recording the story of
creation, in which “Water-deep” is said to be the creator of all forms
of life then in existence, while a third relates to the deluge and the
story of the Assyrian Moses. But however interesting these facts may be
in themselves, we refer to them only by way of illustration, since we
are dealing not so much with the writing itself as with the material on
which writing was done.
♦Inscriptions on prisms♦
Another form of tablet, a somewhat singular variation it may seem,
was in use among the Assyrians at a very early date. This was a
prism, having either six or eight sides, and made of exceedingly fine
terra-cotta. Such prisms were frequently deposited by the Assyrian
kings at the corners of temples, after having been inscribed with
accounts of the notable events in their lives, interspersed with
numerous invocations. Apparently the custom was similar to that
followed at the present day, and the ancient Assyrian tablets no doubt
served the same purpose as the records, newspapers, and documents that
are now deposited in the corner-stones of public or other important
buildings. The prisms used as tablets varied in length from a foot and
a half to three feet, and were covered very closely with small writing.
That the writers’ endeavor was to make the most of the space at their
disposal is suggested by the fact that upon a prism found in the ruins
of the ancient city of Ashur the inscriptions are so crowded that there
are thirty lines in the space of six inches, or five lines to the inch.
The prism recites the valiant deeds of Tiglath-Pileser I., who reigned
from 1120 to 1100 B. C., and undertook campaigns against forty-two
other nations and their kings. He was a monarch whose very name
inspired terror among the surrounding peoples, and his reign was filled
with stirring events and brilliant achievements. ♦Economy of space♦
Small wonder that it was necessary to crowd the inscriptions upon the
prism! Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” in an account of the writings
that have come down to us from the earliest days of the world’s
recorded history, has this to say: “The clay tablets are both numerous
and curious. They are of various sizes, ranging from nine inches long
by six and a half wide to an inch and a half long by an inch wide, or
even less. Sometimes they are entirely covered by writings, while at
others they exhibit on a portion of their surface impressions of seals,
mythological emblems, and the like. Some thousands have been recovered.
Many are historical, and still more are mythological.” Their use in
writing and drawing was almost universal, and we read that the prophet
Ezekiel, when dwelling with “them of the captivity at Telabib, that
dwelt by the river of Chebar,” was commanded, “Take thee a tile and lay
it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem.” (Ezekiel
iv. 1.)
We get a glimpse of another side of that ancient life in a tablet
of Nile clay, preserved in the British Museum, which is one of the
earliest specimens of writing now in existence. It is a proposal of
marriage, and was written about 1530 B. C., more than thirty-four
hundred years ago, by a Pharaoh asking the hand of a daughter of the
Babylonian king. Forty years later, in 1491 B. C., the ten commandments
were graven on tablets of stone.
♦The works of Homer♦
In the early efforts of men to find a means of preserving in lasting
and convenient form the records of their lives and achievements, some
queer materials were pressed into service. Plates of metal were used,
even the precious gold and silver being employed for the purpose.
Skins of animals, tanned to a sort of leather, found favor among many
peoples, while their bones, and even their intestines, were by no means
disdained. The works of Homer, preserved in one of the great Egyptian
libraries in the days of the Ptolemies, were written in letters of gold
on the skins of serpents. Ivory was used, also wood and the bark of
trees. In the early days of Rome, the reports of notable events were
engraved on wooden tablets, which were then exposed to view in public
places, and citizens of all classes, mingling freely, according to
custom, in the great Forum that was the center of the city’s life, were
easily and quickly informed of the important happenings of the day. The
greatest defect in this method was remedied when, later on, wax was
used to form a surface upon the wood, thus admitting of corrections and
erasures, and making it possible to use the same table indefinitely,
simply by scraping off the coating after it had served its purpose,
and supplying other coatings as they were needed. But the first real
advance toward modern writing materials came in the use of the leaves
of olive, palm, poplar, and other trees, which were prepared by being
cut in strips, soaked in boiling water, and then rubbed over wood to
make them soft and pliable.
♦Old materials necessarily discarded♦
It will be readily understood, however, that these crude materials and
primitive methods could not long keep pace with the steady march of
progress. The peoples of the earth were increasing rapidly; they were
advancing in the arts and sciences, and in the experiences that inspire
thought, poetry, and philosophy; they had a heritage of knowledge
to which they were constantly adding, while business transactions,
together with other deeds worthy of record, had greatly multiplied.
It was but natural that the materials which had once been entirely
adequate should now be discarded as cumbersome and unfitted to the new
conditions. The sands in the hour-glass were beginning to run golden;
time was taking on a value unknown before. A deed of land written in
clay and put away to bake might answer the purpose when real-estate
transfers were infrequent and attended with much ceremony. A clay
tablet might serve in a marriage proposal by a king who had the power
to meet and vanquish all rivals, but terra-cotta was not suited either
for the record of numerous and rapid business transactions or for the
writing of books. The biography of one man, or a single treatise in
philosophy, would have required a whole building, while a library of
modern dimensions, as to the number of books, would probably have left
little room in a city for the dwellings of its inhabitants.
♦Discovery of papyrus♦
What was to take the place of the old and cumbersome materials? Even at
a very early date men were asking this question, and it was the good
fortune of Egypt to be able to give answer. Along the marshy banks
of the Nile grew a graceful water-plant, now almost extinct, which
was peculiarly fitted to meet the new demands, as we shall see in the
succeeding chapter. The discovery of its value led to an extensive
industry, through which the land of the Pharaohs was enabled to take
high rank in letters and learning, and, to maintain a position of
wealth, dignity, power, and influence that otherwise would have been
impossible, even in those remote days when printing was still many
centuries beyond the thoughts or dreams of men.