Who Invented Paper?
In ancient times, there was no paper. People pressed letters into clay tablets, or wrote with ink on papyrus, made from the stem of a plant that grew in Egypt, and on parchment, made from the skin of animals. The Chinese wrote on pages made of wood or silk. Then in the year 105, a man named Ts’ai Lun, who was a counselor to the
Paper is used for writing, printing and wrapping and is made from vegetable matter. Nowadays paper is made from the wood of fast-growing trees such as fir, pine and spruce. The wood is cut into very fine pieces, mixed with water and other chemicals and heated. This soft mixture, called wood pulp, is then cleaned and whitened and pressed out into the sheets of paper we know. Waste paper, with the link or dye removed, can be used to make recycled paper. The first paper known to history was made in around 3500 BC by the ancient Egyptians who used strips from the papyrus reeds which they dampened, made into a criss-cross pattern and pressed into sheets. Our very word paper comes from “papyrus”. However, paper closer to our modern type was invented in China in about AD 705 by a scholar called Ts’ai Lun. Legend has it that, one day, hewatched a wasp making its nest by chewing up pieces of bamboo, mixing them with its own saliva and working the resultant ball into a flat sheet with its feet a
The wood-derived paper still used today was developed in A.D. 105 by Chinese inventor Tsai Lun. He was the first to create a thin, flat sheet or tissue from mostly bark, hemp, and other fibrous materials such as rags. The elements of this ancient method are still used in paper mills. Chinese paper slowly made its way to the West, spreading first to Japan in A.D. 610 and then to Egypt around A.D. 900. Around A.D. 1100 paper was introduced in Spain by the Moors, a nomadic people originally from modern-day Mauritania who spread cultural influences in Europe. By the 1400s paper was being made throughout Europe, but it was not until the late 1700s that paper was being produced in long, continuous rolls. In 1798 a French paper mill clerk invented a machine that could make a continuous sheet of paper, of various sizes and shapes, from wood pulp. The machine was improved and patented by English paper makers…
Ans. T’sai Lun of China is credited for inventing paper about 2000 years back. This question has been answered comprehensively on Google Answer. Please view it at http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=542478#comments Following 3 are many of sites which provides detailed history of papermaking. • History of Paper Making and all About Paper by HQ • History of Paper & Papermaking by About.com • History of Papermaking by Arkansas Dept.
” Right away, two possible answers raced through your mind, and one predicament emerged. You simply couldn’t decide if it was the ancient Chinese or the ancient Egyptians that invented paper. While you were struggling for an answer, the clock was winding down; you only had ten more seconds to formulate a response. What would it be? 2 The word “paper” was derived from an ancient Egyptian word “papyrus.” Papyrus is a grass-like aquatic plant that thrives along the riverbanks of the Nile in Egypt. The plant can grow up to 20 feet tall. Its stems are upright and triangular-shaped. Its leaves are long. And its flowers bloom in clusters at the tip of each stem. Dating as far back as 5,000 years, the ancient Egyptians began to use papyrus in several different ways. Among the various applications, one — as a writing material — stood out and later helped coin the word “paper.” 3 Making papyrus was both time-consuming and expensive. To start, the ancient Egyptians needed to peel away the plant
