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Early humans etch and paint on cave walls and draw characters in wet clay.
Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Chinese may have made the first paper from old fishing nets.
Cài Lún, a Chinese court official, mixes bark, hemp and rags with water, mashes it into pulp, presses out the liquid and hangs the thin net to dry in the sun. As the first to document his efforts, he is designated the “inventor of paper.”
Having been kept a secret in China for centuries, the art of papermaking slowly spreads to Africa and Europe. However, there is not much paper, since making it requires a lot of materials, and rags are hard to come by.
Ironically, when the Black Death kills millions of people in Europe, tons of clothing and rags become available at about the same time as the printing press is invented. Mass production of printed materials signals the beginning of the modern communication era.
William Rittenhouse builds the first American paper mill in Germantown, PA. In a slow and labor-intensive process, the Rittenhouse Mill makes about 100 pounds of paper per day by hand from old cotton and linen rags.
Nicholas Louis-Robert of France invents the fourdrinier, a machine that produces paper on an endless wire screen.
Papermakers begin successfully using wood fiber to make paper, a process that is introduced to the U.S. in the early 1900s.
An estimated 14,000 tons of paper per day is produced in the US.
Automation and other technological innovations vastly improve paper mill productivity. Some mills are up to 500 feet long and operate at 60 mph. Over 250,000 tons of paper products are produced every day in the US.
Over 50% of the paper used in America is recycled, setting a higher bar for future recycling goals.
The online resource, PaperRep, is introduced. It compiles tools to help production efficiency, along with information on the print and paper industry, into a powerful online resource.
Paper is an important part of daily life and culture. It is the tangible element that has continuously fed into society through print media, advertising, education and other traditional forms of resources, sales and information gathering.
Now that there is a major shift in the industry, it is important to not disregard paper, but to continue looking at ways it can be used as a form of communication. Paper is essential to the history and the development of cultures and it is a sound form of record for both the past and the future.
Throughout this slideshow you will see how communication has been formed using paper.