THE FIRST PAPER

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 7 January 1925, Page 6

THE FIRST PAPER

Tho credit for making ITie first paper is duo to a Chinese named Ts’ai-lun. In A.D. 75 lie made, the first hand sheet of paper from the bark of a, mulberry tree. Before this leaves of trees and various barks used in crude form had been good enough for the Egyptians. Romans and other nations. The Chinese, however, did not use the crude inner bark of the ti'ee as the final material on which to make his records. He used the bark merely as a raw material from which he produced a. finished sheet of paper by a series of processes which, primitive as they may seem to us now, were the forbears of paper ma mi fact ure to-d ay. China monopolised the art of papermaking for about 800 years, until the secret was learned from her by Hie Arabs, who improved upon the Chinese process bv using linen or cotton rags instead of mulberry bark. Nowadays, to meet the enormous demands of the press and commerce generally, over 400 varieties of wood and grasses have been called into requisition. Linen and cotton rags are used only in the making of the finest notepaper. Of the paper now manufactured, 99 per cent, is machine-made.