• w 13 I < H 0. S o h <« o w b! 2 & < t> G. O fc. 2 hi !t i Taper makers speak of " engine sizing" and "tub" or "surface sizing." 'By en- gine-sized paper, they mean a paper which has been sized in the beater. Tub or surface-sized paper is made on the Fourdrinier machine, the web moving through a bath of glue or starch or a combination of both. Taper makers were never agreed on the subject of sizing, particularly rosin sizing. Alum and rosin are also two important sizing agents. £ither used alone is not very effective, but together they form a compound which waterproofs the fibers and therefore pre- vents ink from, being absorbed and SOLVING THE SIZE PROBLEM spreading on the writing paper. This subject of sizing has engaged the chem- ists of the American Writing Taper Company for over ten years. It used to be the practice in most writing-paper mills to use liberal doses of alum whenever the pulp seemed not to be running correctly. Research showed that the practice was to be condemned and that far too much alum is used in indiscrimi- nate ways. During the past three years the American Writing Taper Company has saved S3 00,000 worth of alum. Smulsions of rosin and soap are widely used in sizing paper. The best sizing effect is obtained with much free rosin; but emulsions are not easily formed when the free rosin is high. Research con- ducted in the American Writing Taper Company s laboratory resulted in the de- velopment of a process of making a clear rosin size — a solution which will not "settle out" and which has greater siz- ing power than the ordinary milky emul- sions. All the guessing that attended the making of rosin size has disappeared, and an error is corrected by mere in- spection. In rosin alone this represents a saving of over $150,000 a year. The 'Paper Trade Lacks Standards tests the steel that he buys, in order to make sure that it meets his standards. If the automobile has ceased to be the butt of comic weeklies, it is solely because price and eye as measuring de- vices have given place to machines that pull, twist, and bend samples of metal. There are at least two hundred and fifty major classes of paper, and in each of these classes dozens of varieties are to be found. Writ- ing papers, printing papers, cigarette papers, blotting papers, wrapping papers, corrugated papers, crepe papers, waterproof papers, cart- ridge papers, wall papers — the list is endless. A few grades of manuscript and printing paper were made by the mills of Spain, Italy, Germany, France, and England in the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries. If we needed any evidence of the advance of civilization, surely we would find it in the bewildering varieties of papers that are now made. Paper has become a necessity. The lithographer demands a paper that will not stretch, the cigarette maker a paper that is free from pinholes and that has certain burning properties, the banker a stock certificate paper of great durability. Every industry uses paper of some kind. It does not specify scientifically what it wants. It says in effect: "Give me a paper on which I can have labels printed, or in which I can wrap cheese, or in which I can pack meat, or which I can use for a cap lining, or which will filter liquids in the laboratory." And the paper maker proceeds to meet these demands. Under the stress of competition in price one paper mill seeks to obtain an advantage by the use of cheaper materials or by modifications in the manufacturing process — devices that are not betrayed in the finished sheet. No wonder the number of papers made to meet a particular re- quirement is endless. Clearly the paper trade lacks standards. The HOW MUCH DIRT IS IN THAT LOT OF PULP? The American Writing Paper Company buys not merely rags or wood pulp to be converted into paper, but cellulose. In other words, it inspects the raw material. Wood pulp fre- quently contains dirt. T>irty wood pulp means a dirty sheet of paper. This operator is deter- mining the dirt in a sample of pulp. If some particular lot of pulp is too dirty, he will re- ject it entirely. The test is made by simply placing the sample sheet over an electric light. The dirt specks are clearly silhouetted. "By testing wood pulp for dirt, the laboratory of the American Writing Taper Company has saved as much as S300 per car. 'Discovering New Facts about 'Paper paper maker tells the ultimate consumer very little about the suitability of a given paper for a given purpose. Price dominates the mind of the purchaser — not quality and performance. Pig iron, lumber, explosives, engines, electric lamps, kodaks, are sold according to their abil- ity to fulfill definite purposes; they meet certain standards. But not paper. If a manufacturer wishes to standardize his product, he must first know exactly how it is made. This is not intended to be a paradox. Until comparatively recently, the cannerdid not know exactly what happened when he canned food — evidenced by the fact that a few parts per million of copper rubbed from cooking utensils turn canned corn gray or canned shrimp black, and that string beans not properly blanched are tough and slimy when canned. The glass maker likewise proved that he knew little about his own manufacturing processes when the chemist stepped in and showed him how to make glass, not with twenty different compounds, but with four. To set a standard in an industry, to know exactly what happens when materials are sub- jected to manufacturing processes, to test a finished product for quality — all this means research. Now the paper industry has never set up standards for its finished product — standards which will enable the paper merchant or the printer or the ultimate consumer to determine the fitness of a given piece of paper for a partic- ular purpose — because it has never conducted research systematically and thoroughly. Modern pulp-making methods, it is true, have been de- veloped largely by chemical research, but re- SUBSTITUTING A CAMERA FOR THE EYE A photograph of what appears on the mi- croscope slide teaches much. The wood out of which a pulp was made can be identified; the degree to which pulp has been bleached can be determined; the pulp produced under different mechanical and cooking conditions can be studied. The average fiber lengths and the percentage of various fibers mixed in a given sample of pulp can be ascer- tained; the nature and the amount of treat- ment of the stock received in the beater are revealed. There is hardly a process in paper making that cannot be scientifically studied with the help of microphotographs. ■ IO 'Developing New 'Processes and 'Products Jl EXPERIMENTING WITH NEW PROCESSES AND NEW PAPER The mill is not ordinarily the place to carry out a new idea which involves radical changes in manufacturing meth- ods. Indeed, the procedure may prove to be ruinously expensive. The mortality of new ideas is notoriously high. 'Before the American Writing Taper Company adopts a new idea, the 'Department of Technical Control is consulted. In that 'Department a promising material or method is passed through four stages before it is approved or disapproved. In the first stage small laboratory appa- ratus is used; in the last a full-sized equipment. So, pulp is experimentally made in beaters that range in capacity from one-half to seven hundred and fifty pounds; and paper is made by hand and by a ?nachine which will produce a sheet from twenty to sixty inches wide. Not until the process has successfully passed the fourth stage with beaters of com- mercial size and with the full width of the paper machine, is the ^Department of Technical Control convinced. In this picture the second stage in the making of a new or improved paper is shown. Small hand sheets are produced with the aid of the miniature paper mill with its digesters, washers, beaters, and vats, each doing its allotted part of the work under the most careful scientific observation. The next step to the larger machines can now be taken with much of the uncertainty removed. Thus, guessing gives place to exact knowl- edge of what a new process or machine will do when introduced in the mill. I I 'Discovering New Facts about 'Paper search spasmodically conducted. Laboratories are to be found in a few paper mills, and in these some notable improvements in testing methods and in manufacturing processes have been de- veloped. But the conversion of cellulose into paper has never been systematically studied as a whole, year in and year out, as electric illu- mination, photography, steel, artificial leather, cottonseed oil, and coal-tar dyes have been studied. It is to this task that the American Writing Paper Company has addressed itself. At Hol- yoke, Massachusetts, the world's paper city, it has established a department of technical con- trol, a laboratory which explores the unknown in the chemistry of paper. It is a laboratory which is second to none in its high ideals, its personnel, and its equipment. If paper which is to be used for printing, writing, wrapping, filtering, and thousands of MEASURING OPACITY AND COLOR The transparency of a paper is in- fluenced by the kind of pulp used, the manner in which the pulp has been treated in the beater, the amount and kind of mineral added as a filler, and the bulk of the finished sheet . 'But how can you tell accurately if one sheet of paper of a certain weight is more or less transparent than another sheet of the same weight ? The answer is sup- plied by an instrument which meas- ures the amount of light that passes through a sample of paper. other purposes is to be made of unvarying qual- ity, the first requisite is unvarying raw material. "It can't be done," says the practical paper maker. Wood pulp, rags, cotton, jute, esparto grass — these are the raw materials of the paper industry. No two trees are alike; therefore no two purchases of wood pulp can be alike. No two carloads of rags can possibly be alike. It seems as if any attempt to standardize the mak- ing of paper is thwarted at the very outset. But the scientific purchase of raw material is one of the simplest tasks that the laboratory at Holyoke performs. The paper mill wants cellulose — the fiber of which all vegetation is built up. So, the laboratory helps the mill to buy not wood pulp, I 2 t Every Step Is Controlled not rags, but cellulose. Similarly, the laboratory sets up standards not for the purchase of coal, but heat. The laboratory is able to state exactly what kind of paper can be made from a ship- ment of wood pulp or rags. It studies the fibers. It matters much if they are long or short; for length of fiber determines some of the charac- teristics of the finished sheet. The natural stiff- ness of the fibers, too, must be considered. The practical paper maker is guided solely by sight and touch in these matters; the chemists in the laboratory at Holyoke, by the microscopic and chemical findings. Dirty wood pulp may be re- jected entirely; it means a dirty sheet of paper. By a scientific examination of the material that comes to the American Writing Paper Com- pany's mills, the laboratory is able to classify its cellulose content and to determine the paper- makingvalue of that cellulose content. As much as #300 a car has been saved by buying not merely wood pulp or rags, but cellulose. And so it is with the various chemicals that are added at different stages of the manufactur- ing process to give desired qualities to the fin- ished paper — the dyes, the sizing, the acids and alkalis, the clay, kaolin, and sulphate of lime. The laboratory knows exactly what is to be ex- pected of a given alkali, acid dye, or filler, before it is purchased. Every step of the paper-making process is similarly controlled. The whole art of paper- making resolves itself into two main processes. Of these the one is a reduction of the cellulose to a pure white pulp, and the second the con- version of the pulp into an entirely new fabric IT HAS ALL THE QUALITY OF SUNLIGHT 7/ used to be hard for a paper maker to match the samples for color after four clock in the afternoon. Arti- ficial light has not the same color values as sunlight. A glass for an electric lamp has been invented which 'makes it possible to match at night time. It is used in the laboratory of the American Writing T'aper Com- pany. *3 'Discovering New Facts about 'Paper WHERE THE LABORATORY CONDUCTS PHYSICAL TESTS OF PAPER If you want to find out in a crude way what is the strength of a rubber band, you stretch it to the limit with your two hands. Similarly the tensile strength of paper is determined, but by a machine {the one in the picture which re- sembles the sector of a circle). The laboratory operator reads off on the scale what force is re- quired to break the sample in the machine, just as you read off on the dial of a platform scale how heavy you are. There are other machines on the table. One of them folds a paper back and forth hundreds and even thousands of times until it breaks. The number of folds is of course registered automatically. Then there is a gauge which measures thickness, and also a Mullen tester which measures the bursting strength of apiece of paper. You know that moist paper is not nearly so strong as dry paper. Since moisture tends to weaken, it follows that physical tests of paper must be conducted in a room the atmosphere of which is not dry today and moist tomorrow. The humidity of this testing room is controlled by a special apparatus. That is why it is called "the constant humidity room." "Paper sometimes shrinks while it is being transported great dis- tances by rail. Isn't it evident that the atmos- pheric conditions under which it is made, sold, and used should be standardized? — a sheet of paper which has the proper surface, thickness, weight, tensile strength, resistance to wear and tear, color, and other attributes. In most paper mills the practical men in charge of operations, men who have learned how to make paper after long experience, are left largely to their own devices. Chemicals are used with little real knowledge of their effect. Wastes result that total several hundred thousand dollars a year in a large mill. It is this very empir- ical, wasteful method of manufacturing that has made it so difficult to standardize paper prod- ucts. In the mills of the American Writing Paper Company it has given place to scientific control by the laboratory. The chemists and physicists of the laboratory know exactly what happens when a given chemical is employed — they know because it has been demonstrated in the lab- oratory. They give precise instructions; they determine all the conditions that shall prevail; they give scientific guidance. Thus the laboratory at Holyoke has discov- ered that far too much alum is used in most paper mills. No scientific standards for the use of x 4 Solving the Sizing Problem alum had been set up; merely the conventions and traditions of paper making governed the use of alum. In the twenty-six mills of the American Writing Paper Company, one hundred thou- sand dollars are saved every year in alum alone by the adoption of laboratory methods. Water is a controversial question among paper makers. Hundreds of thousands of gallons are utilized in a day by a single large paper mill. Paper makers know that very hard water intro- duces difficulties. On the other hand, the labo- ratory of the American Writing Paper Company has shown that an absolutely soft water is almost equally undesirable. A hundred conditions must be considered in the making of paper. The pulp may be merely pure cellulose or slightly con- taminated with unremoved impurities. Some- times water is charged with bacteria, which manifest their presence by the gelatinous gray slime that they produce, a slime which collects dirt, decomposes the fibers caught in it, leaves a dirty spot in the web, and sometimes breaks off so that a hole is produced in the web. The water may be charged with iron or free from iron, high or low in lime and magnesia; the sizing may vary in alkalinity and composition; some dye- stuffs may react differently from others, and some may be readily absorbed while others are resistant. These are scientific questions that can be accurately answered only by a scientifically trained staff. Take the matter of sizing, for example. It typifies the work which the laboratory at Holyoke is doing. A paper fit to be written upon must be sized so that the ink will not "run." Without sizing it would act like so much blotting paper. On the subject of sizing, as a whole, no two paper makers agree — evidence enough that the WHAT THE SCREEN SHOWS Microphotographk slides of fibrous materials, finished papers, samples from the beater, are thrown on the screen in a way made familiar by the stereopticon. Magnified several hundred times or more the charac- teristics of the specimen under ex- amination become apparent as well as the results of different beating methods. r'n*ni^-th £»%%. J 5 ; I XA \ p — ■-■** ■ "-' ■ - .■■■■ *: ■■' ' ■' HOLYOKE the TV^orW's Paper City 'Discovering New Facts about 'Paper laboratory must step in and substitute scientific fact for opinion. This subject of sizing has en- gaged the chemists of the American Writing Paper Company for over ten years. Soap emul- sions of rosin are widely used in sizing paper. The best effect is obtained with much free rosin; but emulsions are not easily formed when the free rosin is high. Research conducted in the labo- ratory showed that most patented processes for overcoming the difficulty are scientifically wrong, and that emulsions of the worst type are advocated. Finally a process of making a clear rosin size was developed — a solution that will not "settle out" and which has greater sizing power than the ordinary milky emulsion. All the guessing that attended the making and using of rosin size has disappeared. An error is easily corrected by mere inspection. No special ma- chinery is required. In rosin alone a saving of over one hundred thousand dollars a year has been shown to be possible. What the value of the increase in the quality of paper may be cannot be estimated. It must not be supposed that the experienced mill man is ignored or that he is reduced to a mere automaton who moves in a certain way when the director of the laboratory presses a button. The accumulated experience of decades is not to be thrown on the scrap heap. No sen- sible laboratory director ignores the advice of a practical paper maker, and the director of the Holyoke laboratory is no exception to this rule. He is guided by the counsel of practical men, especially when it saves him much experiment- ing. In a sense, the entire manufacturing or- ganization of the American Writing Paper ESTIMATING THE FIBER CONTENT OF PAPER First of all he cooked a sample of the paper in a little caustic soda to remove sizing or other binding material. Then he washed the sample and rolled it into a little pill, placed it in a test tube with water, and shook it thoroughly to defiber the particles. He picked out a little of this defiber ed mass with the aid of a needle, dried it on ab- sorbent praper, and placed it on a micro- scope slide to be studied as you now see. Microscopic tests of this kind are conducted by the laboratory in order to match paper for customers, as well as to standardize and classify papers. 18 zA Laboratory with Ideals n mm iM. +jf DETERMINING THE FINISH OF PAPER How smooth is it? What is the finish? 'The printer always asks these questions about a paper. 'Printing quality depends in large part on the smoothness and finish of the paper. 'But how can you predict what the performance of a given sheet of paper will be in the printing shop without actually running it through the press? The eye and the sense of touch are not accurate, scientific gauges. So, in the mills of the American Writing Taper Company this scientific instrument is used to determine exactly the proper finish for a given purpose. Thus it becomes pos- sible to compare the paper produced in a mill with the standard adopted. .I-,..-;;. (W/CW, Company's twenty-six mills is part of the lab- oratory personnel. The truth-seeking spirit of science pervades everywhere. Although the research laboratory is prima- rily intended to improve the American Writing Paper Company's methods and products, it is more than a commercial institution. The great coal-tar laboratories in Europe conduct research in organic chemistry without any financial goal in view. In the laboratories of a great American electric manufacturing company, an immense amount of purely scientific work was carried on, which, in the beginning, shed more light on the constitution of matter than on the best method of making an incandescent lamp. The greatest camera-making company has a laboratory in which probably more investigations in pure optics are made than in any university in the world. So, the laboratory of the American Writ- ing Paper Company conducts research which is directed to pure theory. A study of the paper in- dustry's problems alone cannot result in any startling advance in paper-making methods — merely in greater manufacturing precision and in the improvement of established processes. But once the fundamental chemistry and physics of cellulose are attacked, regardless of immediate commercial results, discoveries of revolutionary importance must inevitably be made. This has been the history of most industrial 19 T>iscovering New Facts about "Taper fanta or/i l^'^-y WHERE PAPER IS STANDARDIZED Which of two samples of paper that look papers sold in the market by other com- the facts that the paper user has a ri± alike and feel alike is the better for a given panies, are tested by the laboratory and clas- to know. As it is now, the consumer has purpose? To answer the question, standards sifted. The day is at hand when paper will no means of determining why two papers must be set up. All the papers of the Amer- be sold on the strength of a label or a water- of apparently the same quality should differ ican Writing 'Paper Company, as well as mark which will express scientifically all markedly in price. No one tells him. research. A study of the residual gases in the tungsten lamp gave the world the half-watt, ni- trogen-filled lamp — an end undreamed of when the investigation began. Years spent in deter- mining what is the chemical constitution of rub- ber have resulted in the discovery of a process for making synthetic rubber (real rubber) in the factory. Fifty years of purely scientific research 20 in coal-tar chemistry have enriched the world with several thousand synthetic dyes, flavoring mate- rials, perfumes, and medicines. So, the labora- tory at Holyoke conducts research which may have no immediate commercial value, but which is bound to be of industrial importance sooner or later. Suppose that it should work out a pre- cise chemical formula for cellulose. The paper Where 'Paper-Making begins SORTING THE RAGS Rags are of two general classes — new rags from which the highest quality papers of great durability and permanency are made, and old or used rags from which papers of lower quality and lesser durability and permanency are made. New rags require, little sorting; they are the bits of linen and cotton cloth left over after high-grade textiles have been made. Old or used rags, however, as they are received by the writing-paper mill, include a motley, heterogeneous mass of cotton and linen rags, old shirts, bits of underwear, fragments of all conceivable textiles, except wool and silk. All of these materials must be sorted. ■■ ■V'.yl £%!'.« Wt 2 I 'Discovering New Facts about 'Paper chemist knows only in a general way the chem- This is called the "Bleach Index Method." ical constitution of cellulose. To a practical The solution of this problem has progressed to paper maker the determination of the chemical such a point that it is now ready to be tried out composition of the material out of which he on a large commercial scale, laboratory results makes paper is one of those theoretical under- having proved satisfactory. takings that seem utterly without industrial pur- This laboratory, which has been established to pose. And yet the more the paper maker knows introduce precise scientific methods in the mills about cellulose, the more will he know about of the American Writing Paper Company, and paper making. Perhaps cellulose will some day which has already done so much to standardize be synthetized; in other words, artificially built paper-making methods and products, occupies up out of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms, an entire building of its own in Holyoke. It is The synthesis will probably be of no direct equipped not merely with the usual apparatus of commercial benefit because vegetation is too a chemical and physical testing station, but with plentiful and cheap. But it will reveal the true real paper-making machinery of its own. It has chemical formula, and with that to guide him, the all the facilities for making paper by hand, by paper chemist will with certainty predict results, small machines, and by full-sized commercial ma- He would know more about the possibilities of chines which will produce a continuous web of cellulose reactions — important when it is con- paper from twenty to sixty inches wide. Whether sidered that practically every known reaction of or not a new paper-making material or a new cellulose has become the basis of a valuable in- process has industrial possibilities can hardly be dustrial process and because the paper maker economically determined in the mills. On the will at last learn what really occurs when cellu- other hand, a laboratory success proves little. A lose fibers are dyed. Science is a key that un- new material or a new manufacturing method locks many doors. One discovery points the way must pass through four stages in the American to another. That is why the American Writing Writing Paper Company's laboratory before it Paper Company's laboratory studies fundamen- is definitely adopted or rejected. The first stage tals as well as mere paper-making problems. — the laboratory stage — yields the discovery. The paper-mill superintendent to-day has In the second stage, small hand sheets are made only his eye to guide him in determining the with small apparatus. If the results are satisfac- correct amount of bleach to be used in a given tory, the third stage is entered, which means that lot of rags or wood pulp. No two pairs of eyes paper is made by machinery which is an accurate see alike. Even the same pair of eyes will not see reproduction of that to be found in the mill, alike twice in succession. The result of this lack Finally, in the fourth stage, paper is made on of technical control is over-bleached pulp, and what is really a commercial scale, but still under paper made of over-bleached pulp turns yellow laboratory control. The obstacles and the de- in storage. The Department of Technical Con- fects that appear at each stage are many. Not un- trol has worked out a method which will enable til this fourth stage has been successfully passed the superintendent to determine accurately the are the experimental data translated into mill correct amount of bleach to use, in order to terms. The paper thus made is not a laboratory get the brightest color without overbleaching. curiosity. It can be sold — proof of the commer- 22 ilC Paper Is Made in the 'Beater & 1% = = y- 'W»* pVs ft2fe.^ *