Paper has a long history, beginning with the ancient Egyptians and continuing to the present day. For thousands of years, hand-made methods dominated and then, during the 19th century, paper production became industrialised. Originally intended purely for writing and printing purposes, a wide variety of paper grades and uses are now available to the consumer
Of all the writing and drawing materials that people have employed down the ages, paper is the most widely used around the world. Its name derives from papyrus the material used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Papyrus, however, is only one of the predecessors of paper that together are known by the generic term ‘tapa’ and are mostly made from the inner bark of paper mulberry, fig and daphne.
Tapa has been found extensively in nearly all cultures along the Equatorial belt and is made by what is possibly the oldest papermaking technique – one still practised in some parts of the Himalayas and South East Asia. Indeed, recent archaeological excavations in China have revealed some of the oldest ‘tapa’ paper ever found which shows that paper was being produced in China before western records began.
The tapa technique involves cooked bast, which is flattened with a wooden hammer to form a thin, fibrous layer and then dissolved in a vat with water to make a pulp. A screen consisting of a wooden frame with a fabric base is then laid in a puddle or big basin and floats with the fabric just under the surface of the water. The papermaker then pours the quantity of pulp needed to make one sheet into this ‘floating mould’ and spreads it evenly, by hand, across the surface. The screen is then carefully lifted out of the water, allowed to drain off and a sheet of paper forms on the wire. Once the water has dripped off, the screen is placed in the sun or near a fire to dry. When dry, the sheet easily peels off and, apart from possible smoothing, requires no further treatment. This technique has two basic drawbacks. Firstly, a separate screen is needed for each new sheet, and is only available for use again after the last sheet has dried. And secondly, an increase in production can soon lead to a shortage of raw material, since fresh bast is not always available everywhere in the required quantity.
The fibres normally used for textiles, like flax and hemp, also served as substitutes for bast.
Paper is the staple of my existence (no pun intended). From when I was six and spent my days filling pads with fantastical designs for houses, zoos, and factories, to the present, when I surround myself with sheets bearing drafts of essays on one side and systems of equations on the other, my life has been ruled by this ruled substance — simple, utile, and ubiquitous.
This invention was a change to the Chinese because paper was invented in China around 105 CE. So the Chinese have paper and now it allowed an easy way for people to communicate. It caused a change in their culture because with paper they can now pass down culture easier than before. Before its invention the writing surfaces that were used were, bones, tortoise shells, and bamboo slips. But as the Chinese civilization started to grow they proved to themselves that these writing surfaces won’t work because of the bulk and weight.
The papermaking process begins with pulp. Pulp is cellulosic fibrous material extracted from cellulosic fiber from wood. Glatfelter uses the Kraft Process to make both hardwood and softwood pulps. Hardwood pulps are taken from oaks, beeches, poplars, birches and eucalyptus tress. They have short fibre of average length of 1 millimeter. The primary purpose of hardwoods is for the paper to achieve bulkiness, smoothness and opacity. Softwood on the other hand is taken from pine and spruce with long fibre averaging 3 millimeters, it provides addition strength to paper. Both softwood and hardwood are produce independently of each other and are mixed end at desire ratio in the paper plant. The process starts from wood chips. Trees are chipped to make wood chips from half an inch to an inch long and up to two fifth inches thick. The chips are feed into a digester, which with cooking liquor would create a chemical reaction, which delignificate the wood. The cooking liquor is composed of white and black liquor. White liquor is composed of mainly sodium hy...
This new technology is not without its shortcomings. First, the printing press used limited materials. Next, as Mumford notes, the advent of print led calligraphers and manuscript copyists out of work. Furthermore, as Graff finds, it created “typographical fixity”—material once printed cannot be changed. Finally, mass production was dependent and limited to large markets (Mumford, 95)....
Papyrus is one of the most amazing and “ahead of its time” inventions of ancient Egypt. Papyrus is ancient paper that the Egyptians somehow miraculously figured out how to make, which in all ways is amazing. The papyrus paper is made out of, as its name explains, the papyrus plant, which was a plant that grew well in the marshes of Egypt! This plant had a hard and “crisp” outside, with a soft inside. Papyrus was in fact a reed, and it had many uses. The outside part was used for a number of things, including Sandals and boats. Granted the list of the uses for the outside, grows quite long, the uses for the soft inside were to say the least few. The very main use, was in fact for papyrus paper! On another note, the back of the papyrus was somewhat shaped like a triangle or pyramid! This leads me to believe that there may have been some sense of spirituality behind papyrus, but enough about the papyrus plant, let's explore how papyrus paper was made!
Edgar Allan Poe has been debated to be the author of the most dark and horrific pieces of literature. He was favored by many for his complex pieces of literature that have ultimately impacted the world of literature today. However, Poe’s pieces of work did receive harsh criticism before and after his death. Because Poe was generally known for his thought-provoking short stories, his short stories often received mixed reviews. One of Poe’s most arguable short stories is “The Fall of the House of Usher”. This short story was “regarded as an early and supreme example of the Gothic horror story” (Plot Summary: "The Fall of the House of Usher"). Poe himself described this piece as “arabesque” due to its ornate prose (Plot Summary: "The Fall of the House of Usher"). However, many critics disagreed with each other on their views of “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
Wood-type printing allowed new typefaces to be created and used for printing cheaper than ever before. Technological advances permitted machine-set typography to be printed on machine-manufactured paper with high-speed steam-powered printing presses. The use of color lithography passed the aesthetic experience of colorful images from the privileged few to the whole of society.
(Violatti et al., 2016). The invention of paper is no doubt an incredible achievement of the Han dynasty which had a lasting impact on the modern world. Paper also had a tremendous impact upon the political, cultural, social, and historical advancements of the Han empire.
The invention of the printing press was one of the most useful technologies in history because it helped spread ideas, produced books, and greatly improved the economy. Johannes Gutenberg, who was a German goldsmith, developed the printing press “in Mainz, Germany between 1446 and 1450” (Ditttmar, 1133). The printing press was made to print books, newspapers, and flyers. The machine was made from wood and was based off screw presses, that worked with inked movable type heads that allowed the paper to be quickly and efficiently pressed with letters. The type head was made by pouring lead-tin alloy into a hand mold, along a rectangular stalk.
Kareem is a talented undergraduate student who I have had the privilege of working with in nuclear science research over the past year. We have worked on two separate neutron activation analysis projects together. He has also taken my upper level course in Nuclear and Particle Physics (UTPA course # PHYS 4309) with honors during the fall semester of 2013 and has expressed interest in my participation as his honors thesis advisor. It is a pleasure to offer this letter of recommendation for the DOE SULI program.
The basic process of making paper has not changed in more than 2000 years. It involves two stages: the breaking up of raw materials in water to make a suspension of individual fibbers and the formation of felted sheets by spreading this suspension on a porous surface, to drain excess water. The essential steps of papermaking by machine are identical with those of hand papermaking just much more complex. The first step in machine papermaking is the preparation of the raw material. For centuries, the main raw materials used in papermaking were cotton and linen fibbers obtained from rags. Today more than 95 percent of paper is made from wood cellulose. Wood is used mainly for the cheapest grades of paper, such as newsprint. Cotton and linen fibbers are still used for high quality writing and artist’s papers. Many kinds of wood can be used such as aspen, beach, birch fir, gum, hemlock, oak, pine, and spruce.
Human beings are creative species. They have come up with great ideas and invented some wonderful tools since they have been on earth. From the time that someone threw a rock in the ground to make the first tool, to the introduction of the wheel, to the development of electricity and the Internet. These alterations, and many more have been made to provide us the modern life we are living today. There are many inventions that have changed the world dramatically. Historians suggest that the printing press was one of the most revolutionary inventions in the human history. The printing press was invented over five-hundred years ago and was the first step in transforming societal literacy. Around 1440, the printing press was invented by the German Johannes Gutenberg, who was the first to design a technique that has the ability to transform the ink from the movable type to paper. Basic development of the printing press was, the hand mold which is the process that enabled the production of metal movable types. Printing presses with this movable type mechanism increased the rates at which copies of books
Before writing even existed, ancient civilizations would etch pictures in clay in order to record things. These stones were used for recording and papyrus was used soon after. These inventions brought great progress in the time period they came into existence but had many negative effects. The process of making clay stones was a long one and wasn’t always available. They were usually very large and not easy to transport so communication was limited. One of the earliest sign of writing and a newspaper was the Romans, Acta Diurna. It included the rules of the day and was carved into stone daily. Papyrus was only available in certain areas and was also a long process to make. Papyrus was able to withstand dry climates but if br...
This was a simple means of writing that required raw materials ample in the environment. The degree of technology it used can be seen as only slightly higher than the scientific concept of the sharpened wedge (blade) used to cut an angle on the reed tip. The small effort needed to build a pen was far less than that of the ink needed. Nature grew the reed, humans merely plucked it from the ground and sliced off its bottom tip. During this period of Antiquity, the Egyptians had also constructed the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx. By no means was the pen as physically large and complex a creation as the wonders of the world, which were constructed with the sole purpose of being the final resting-place of the Pharaoh. However, the reed pen had a much more profound, a much greater effect on the world and the path our present-day history took.