Column: A brief history of paper
By Amanda Haffele
Before paper was invented, wood, bamboo, stones, papyrus and even silk were all used to capture history.
Bamboo and stones were heavy, and silk and papyrus were too expensive for everyday use. In ancient Egypt, scribes spent years learning their craft and weren’t allowed to use papyrus for their lessons until they had mastered the basics of writing. Instead they had to practice on wood or ostraca (pottery shards).
Cai Lun, sometimes spelt T’sai Lun, was inducted into the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in 2009 for inventing paper in 105 AD. He was a servant from the Chinese imperial court during the Hans Dynasty.
Lun created the first modern paper by using bark of trees, hemp waste, old rags, and fish nets. Due to Lun’s position within the imperial court, he was able to create a widespread adoption of paper that dramatically changed society.
Even with the widespread adoption of paper, it was still difficult and time consuming to make. Because of this, papermaking was an artisan craft and didn’t spread to Asia until the early 600s and into the Middle East until the mid-700s. Europeans weren’t documented making paper until the 12th century.
Papermaking didn’t reach the United States until 1690, when William Rittenhouse emigrated from Holland and opened the Rittenhouse Paper Mill in what is now Philadelphia. Previous to this, all paper was imported from Europe.
Papermaking stayed virtually the same until Louis Nicolas Robert, invented a wire paper machine in 1797. Prior to this invention, paper was made one sheet at a time by dipping a rectangular frame or mold with a wire screen bottom into a vat of pulp. The frame could not be reused until the previous sheet of paper was removed.
Robert’s wire paper machine made continuous, long lengths of paper that were manually hung on cables or rolls. The French Government granted Robert a patent two years later. Robert sold his revolutionary design to an Englishman who had the financial resources to manufacture the machine.
About 1,600 years after Cai Lun’s invention, paper was still being made using rags and plant fibers. In the mid 1700s, French entomologist and writer Rene Reaumur observed wasps feeding from wood to make their nests. Based on this observation, he wrote an article suggesting paper could be made from trees.
One hundred years later, 25-year-old Friedrich Gottlob Keller took Reaumur’s suggestion literally, and built a machine that could extract the fibers from wood.
Lacking the financial resources to make this machine commercially, Keller sold his design and patent in 1845 to German papermaker, Heinrich Voelter. Voelter partnered with Johann Voith to redesign Keller’s machine to improve factory output.
Voith saw a need to create higher quality wood pulp, and therefore invented a new process for refining wood splinters. His innovation revolutionized the paper making industry by creating a high quality wood pulp for paper products.
The first commercial groundwood pulp machine was on U.S. soil in 1867. The New York Times was the seventh U.S. newspaper to switch from using rags and plant fiber paper to wood-based paper. By the end of the 1800s, there were only a small handful of newspaper companies that hadn’t switch over to wood based paper.
Humans have used “recycled content” in paper since the beginning of time. Used rags and wood chips or shavings are some of the first recycled items. In ancient Japan, the people generally treated recycled paper as being more precious than new and the recycled paper was often used in paintings and poetry.
In 12th Century Japan, it was recorded of an emperor’s wife that after he died, she recycled all the poems and letters she received from him and wrote a sutra on the recycled paper to wish peace upon his soul. But it wasn’t until the 21st century that recycled paper and cardboard were used as feed stock to make new paper and cardboard as we know it today.
Keep that paper feedstock coming. Make sure paper and cardboard are free of oily residue, is larger than a credit card in size (sorry, no shredded paper), and contains minimal amounts of paint, glitter, glue, stickers, etc.
As a reminder, cartons or aseptic packaging is not recyclable in our area. Toss cartons into the trash.
Last but not least, if you find yourself in Appleton, make sure to visit the Atlas Science Center, formally the Paper Discovery Center. This museum houses the paper International Hall of Fame and reams of paper science information.
Amanda Haffele is the Portage County Solid Waste Director and she works at the Material Recovery Facility, 600 Moore Rd., in the Plover Industrial Park. It can be reached at 715.346.1931 or www.co.portage.wi.us/department/solidwaste.