HOLYOKE MACHINE COMPANY, HoLYOKE, Mass., u. s. a. WEB SUPER-CALENDER, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, This Machine is complete and substantial in all its parts, with Patent Reeling Apparatus, and Patent Fast and Slow Speed arrangement. The Paper Rolls are made of paper prepared specially for the purpose. The speed can be changed from fast to slow, or the reverse without stopping the machine. The shippers are sent complete with each machine. ALSO SHEET CALENDERS, FRICTION CALENDERS, PLATERS, CHILLED IRON, SUPER AND COTTON ROLLS, And all other Machinery for Making and Finishing Paper. r """iMg^^: THE DooLEY Paper Cutters. Sizes : 32-inch, 36-inch, 40-inch and 48-inch. MANUFACTURED BY THE ATLANTIC WORKS, East Boston, Mass. AGEJVTS: MORRIS ABLER, 73 Duane Street, New York. CHARLES BECK, 609 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. PELOUZE & GARY, Baltimore, Md. H. L. PELOUZE & SON, Washington, D. C, and Richmond, Va. GEO. S. NEWCOMB & CO., 241 St. Clair St., Cleveland, Ohio. OSTRANDER & HUKE, 81 and 83 Jackson Street, Chicago, 111. W. M. BAMBERGE, Houston, Texas. Send for Circular and Price List. r The Paper World. A SPECIAL JOURNAL OF INFORMATION, DISCUSSION AND RECITAL AS TO PAPER. Subscription Price, - - $2.00 Per Year. CLARK W. BRYAN & CO., Publishers, HOLVOKE, MASS. The best trade journal in the world. — Carson, Brown & Co., Dalton, Mass. Elegantly gotten up. Deserves a liberal patronage. — Rice, Kendall & Co., Bos- ton, Mass. POOLE & HUNT'S ?^ H Uh ^ini-i '''^ iliiMiMi ^ Made of best materials and in the best style of workmanship. Machine-Molded Mill Gearing, From I to 20 feet diameter, of any desired face or pitch, molded by our own special machinery. SHAFTING, PULLEYS and HANGERS, Of the latest and most improved designs. STEAM ENGINES, BOILERS, Saw Mills, Mixers and General Outfit for Fertilizer Works. Shipping facilities the best in all directions. Poole & Hunt, Baltimore, Md. N. B. — Special attention given to heavy Gearing. A HISTORY OF PAPER. ITS GENESIS ITS REVELATIONS L^l Origin and Manufacture, Utility and Commercial Value of AN InDISI'ENSAHLE STAPLE OF THE COM- MERCIAL World. NOV 22 1882. >p/rwAaHiH«*l ot V. Holyoke, Mass., U. S. A.: CLARK W. BRYAN & COMPANY 18S2. ^ ^7J COPYRKUITED, iSSl. Paper World Press. 1882. ,>\ r Prepared by J. E. A. SMITH, And originally published in the pages of The Patkr World A Sixteenth Century Paper Mill. V. r IN THREE PARTS. PART I. Connection hetween the Invention of Printing and Pai'er — Reasons for the long delay of roth — Ar- ticles USED IN the place OF MODERN PaI'KR BEFORE ITS INVENTION. PART n. The Second Era of Paper-Making — IlANn-MADE Pa- per FROM Vegetable Pulp. PART III. The MANU^•ACTURE of Paper p.y Machinery —The Manufacture of Paper p.y Hand. V. r Vat Paper-Makini; in iS.Si, V r PART I. Connection behueen the Invention of Printing and Papei'' — Reason, for the long delay of both — Articles used m the place of Modern Paper before its Invention. A PHILOSOPHICAL historian maintains that the failure of the civilized and highly cultivated nations of antiquity to invent the art of Printing was due to the lack of a cheap, light and durable material to receive and preserve the impression of the types ; and, in support of his proposition, he reminds us of the near and suggestive approach to such a discovery which was constantly before the eyes of Egyptians, Greeks and Romans in the use of seals. Since this proposition was made, some thirty or forty years ago. Oriental investigation has found, an- tedating even Egyptian civilization, on the in- scribed bricks of Babylon and Nineveh, long histories actually printed, although the impression was embossed by moulds instead of being colored by ink. It was, nevertheless, just as much print- ing as the books which are now prepared for the use of the blind. In often-recurring phrases, r 8 PAPER: ITS GENESIS such as the styles of the kings, the inscriptions were doubtless made by stereotyped moulds, but the cuneiform printers upon bricks evidently had movable types, although there is no reason to be- lieve that they learned to compose them in " forms." Each separate character, except in the case before mentioned, was probably inscribed by a mould or type provided with a handle, by which it was deftly taken from a set, which ansv/ered the purpose of a modern printer's case, and, after using, as deftly replaced, requiring no further "distribution" before it was again called for. Artists in all such work acquire a dexterity which results in wonderful rapidity of execution, al- though, of course, immeasurably short of such marvels as are accomplished by our modern ma- chine printing. The motions of the printers or stampers who moulded the old inscribed bricks may be supposed to have been similar to those of the musical Swiss Bell Ringers of our time, although much more rapid, as no rhythmic move- ment was required. A still nearer approach to printing in the modern sense is found in the figures and hiero- glyphics inscribed, with heated metal brands, by AND ITS REVELATIONS. way of epitaph, upon bands of red leather bound around the foreheads of some of the Egyptian mummies. It maybe added to these suggestive approaches to the invention of printing, that the ancients had, besides the flowing ink used with a reed or quill pen, another which was applied with a stiff brush, and must have been a near approach to printing ink, even if it could not have been actually used as such. Pliny rudely describes it as made, in various ways, from soot, by mixing it with burnt pitch and resins; " for which purpose," he says, " furnaces have been built which do not permit the escape of the smoke. The best made in this way is from pine w^ood." Soot, obtained in this manner, and resinous oils, are certainly suggestive of lamp and ivory black, resin and vegetable oils ; the chief ingredients of modern printing ink. But, admitting this suggestive approach to the invention of printing — and, as we have shown it, in closer approximation than the author alluded to claims — and granting also that the existence of such a paper as we now possess would have hastened the advent of that art by centuries, still V r lO PAPER: ITS GENESIS K, it does not, of necessity, follow, that its non-exist- ence was the prime or chief cause which, for thou- sands of years, kept hidden from the world that which is not only " the art preservative of all arts," but the indispensable medium of that new life which, since its discovery, has everywhere been the inspirer of mechanical invention, not less than of other grand results of thought. We shall find presently that the prepared papyrus of the Egyptians was even more strictly a true paper than the moulded bricks of Babylon and Nineveh were true printing. The real reason why the world remained so many thousand years upon the very verge of two great discoveries with- out ever crossing it, was that absorption of the mental energy of the nations of antiquity in other directions, which left their inventive genius in a strangely dormant condition. Those nations had artists of wonderful genius and mechanics of ad- mirable skill; but, as compared with those of modern civilization, no great machinists. They were acquainted with the laws of mechanics, and, for some purpose — as in the raising of ponderous stones — employed them with stupendous effect. They had a marvelous dexterity in the use of AND ITS REVELATIONS. \ i artists' and artisans' tools ; but, if they ever com- bined that knowledge and that skill for such pur- poses as modern inventors and machinists combine them, it was with small result as compared with the simplest modern machinery. Having devised a moderately satisfactory machine — such, for in- stance, as the hand-loom of seventy-five years ago may represent — they were content therewith. After that, their highest ambition was to acquire a facile use of it, and, at the utmost, to get the best possible work out of it by manual dexterity, without any restless endeavor to improve the ma- chine itself. And this inactivity in mechanic in- vention — this primitive lethargy of inventive genius — was not confined to the nations of antiq- uity, but continued throughout the middle ages, and, to a certain degree, even long after the in- troduction of the paper manufacture and the in- vention of the printing press. From so protracted a slumber the awakening was naturally slow and gradual. The new philosophy which had birth in the sixteenth century hastened it. The seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed grand and fundamental discoveries and inventions. But the era in which we now live can hardly be r I 2 PAPER: ITS GENESIS said to have commenced prior to the year iS8o. Grand as many inventions previous to that date were, they did not clearly even prophesy that almost bewildering multiplication of automatic machinery which genius has within the last eighty years endowed with a skill — or at least with a precision, delicacy, rapidity and certainty of exe- cution — never attained by intelligent agents. The powers of machinery, of which previous ages laid the sure foundation, have been carried by ours to an exquisite perfection of which they never dreamed; and that with a celerity of prog- ress compared with which all previous advance was but stagnation. It is in the light of the truths which we have thus briefly stated that we must read the history of the paper manufacture. And, in order fully to comprehend its worth to the world, we must also first consider the imperfection of the materials which, before its invention, filled its place, and the costly, wearisome and cumbrous processes of their manufacture. Probably the first purpose for which a substi- tute for paper was required was the transmission of simple messages ; and any tolerably smooth r "N AND ITS REVELATIONS. and light substance which came to hand was suf- ficient to receive the rude figures or hieroglyphics which told the story or helped the messenger to tell it. The smooth bark or the broad leaves of certain trees were generally most available. The white birch of the American forests would have been a favorite ; and it has often been used by both the early settlers and the aborigines as a substitute for paper in cases of necessity.* As the wants of civilization advanced, the different parts of the tree were employed for a time more generally than any other materials ; the leaves be- ing strung upon threads for preservation, the outer and inner bark made smooth and so pliant as to be rolled, and the wood cut into thin boards, and sometimes covered with a coating of wax. Thin sheets of metal or of ivory, leather, painted cloth, stones, brick, and every similar material known to that day were also used. Upon this continent the Aztecs, who attained to a system of hieroglyphical writing, although far inferior to that of the Egyptians, had for their manuscripts, according to Prescott, cotton cloth and skins nicely prepared, and also " a composi- *An ingenious publisher on the Wliite Mountains printed a newspaper upon bircli bark in the year iSSo. r 14 PAPER: IPS GENESIS tion of silk and gum ; " sized silk, as we should say. But " for the most part they used a fine fabric from the leaves of the aloe, agave Ameri- cana, called by them magueys, which grows lux- uriantly over all the table-lands of Mexico." " A sort of paper," continues Mr. Prescott, "was made from it, resembling somewhat the Egyptian papyrus, which, when properly dressed and pol- ished, is said to have been more soft and beauti- ful than parchment. Some of the specimens exhibit their original freshness, and the paintings on them retain their brilliancy of colors. They were sometimes done up in rolls, but more fre- quently into volumes, of moderate size, in which the paper was shut up like a folding screen, with a tablet of wood at each extremity, that gave the whole, when closed, the appearance of a book. The length of the strips was determined only by convenience. As the pages might be read and referred to separately, this form had obvious ad- vantages over the rolls of the ancients." We have seen Oriental manuscripts of a quite recent date folded in the method thus described. The ancient Peruvians, who thought the annals of their empire of sufficient importance to require / ^ AND I TS RE VELA TIONS. I 5 a corps of keepers, had no better aid to show in the place of paper than the quiptt — a cord about two feet long composed of different colored threads tightly twisted together, from which a quantity of smaller threads w^ere suspended in the manner of fringe. The threads were tied in knots, and, by their arrangement, indicated not only sensible ob- jects, but abstract ideas. But the quipus were chiefly used for arithmetical purposes, which they seem to have answered very well. Still papyrus and parchment were the two ma- terials which chiefly supplied the place of paper in the civilized nations of antiquity when they came to have an extended literature and large public and private libraries, as well as to require, as we now do, immense quantities for the ordi- nary transactions of social, official and business life. And these two articles came to be great o staples in the commerce of the world ; Egypt holding a close monopoly both in the manufact- ure of the papyrus and in the production of the raw material, which must have been very lucra- tive indeed. Papyrus is the Latinized Greek name of a plant called by the Egyptians Bublos, whence v r I 6 PAPER: ITS G EXE SIS came the Greek Biblion, paper, and, in a final sense, a book, and thence our name for the Holy Scriptures as the Book of books. It grows in swamps, to the height of ten feet. It was found chiefly in the overflowed lands of the river Nile and the neighboring marshes ; but there, in the days of Egypt's prosperity, it grew in immense abundance, being doubtless carefully cultivated and protected. It has now become rare, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah: "The paper reeds by the brooks, and everything sown by the brooks, shall wither, be dnven away, and be no more." The stalk of this plant, which is properly styled " a reed," is triangular and bare, except near the root, where there are some small leaves. The top is surmounted by a bushy head of long, fibrous foli- age, spreading from the stalk very much in the shape of our common feather dust-brusli. It was cut annually, about eighteen inches of the lower part of the stalk being sold for edible purposes, and the remainder devoted to the paper manufact- ure. This stalk consists of twenty pellicles, or thin folds, varying in fineness of texture from the coarse exterior bark, which was only used for cordage and other purposes, for which hemp and V. AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. \ 7 similar materials are now employed, to the coat- ing nearest the pith where the most delicate fiber was found. The manufactured papyrus was of nine distinct qualities, governed chiefly by the selection of raw material ; and it is quite in accordance with modern custom that each was designated by its own peculiar name, as " Augusta," " Liviana," " Hieretica," etc. The last named, originally the best, was reserved for religious books and uses, but, afterwards, under the influence of Roman culture, the others were made to supply its lux- urious tastes. The coarsest grades, known as the " Tamoretic " and " Emporetica," were sold by weight, and used only for wrapping paper. The process of manufacture was not complicated as compared either with its results or with the making of modern paper. Neither machinery or any intelligent application of chemical science had any part in it. It was purely a mechanical preparation of a substance wonderfully adapted by nature to the purposes for which it was needed. The folds in the tissue of the stalk were first separated by an instrument, sometimes called "a needle," and sometimes " a sharp stone." The r "^ I 8 PAPER: ITS GENESIS latter was probably used at an early period, al- though we find the same term applied, as late as the middle of the fifth century before our era, to the knife employed in the preparation of bodies for burial. A layer of one class of these folds was then placed upon an inclined table of wood, wet with the water of the Nile, and the rough ends cut straight. Across this a second layer was laid at right angles, and sometimes a third at right angles with the second. During the reign of the first Claudius over the Roman empire — A. D. 41-54 — a great improvement in the fineness, strength and color of some varieties of papyrus paper was made by putting a layer of the most delicate folds over the coarser but stronger. Where the folds were imperfect they were patched, the adhesive power being supplied by a glutinous substance which the Egyptians believed to belong to the Nile water, but which actually resided in the papyrus leaf. Hie same glutinous quality caused the layers to adhere when they were subjected to the pressure which was the next step in the man- ufacture. After which they were dried in the sun. A firm, hard sheet having thus been ob- r AND ITS REVELATIOXS. 19 I tained, any roughness in it was beaten smooth with mallets, and the surface polished by hand with a semi-cylinder of stone, glass, shell or ivory. The width of the papyrus sheet was determined partly by convenience and partly by the length of the papyrus leaf used ; specimens are found varying from five to eighteen inches in breadth. The length might be indefinitely prolonged, sheet being added to sheet by the aid of their inherent glutinous property, often aided by paste or some species of glue. There seems to be no good reason why the width might not have been in- creased in the same way, had it been desirable. When finished, the papyrus paper was rolled upon a wooden cylinder, the ends of which pro- jected, and were often ornamentally finished. The longest roll yet found is thirty feet long and eleven inches wide. There are many fabulous accounts of the first use of the papyrus as a writing material, as we have described it ; but the true date is lost in the mists of the earliest antiquity. In some form it was certainly thus used as early as 2400 B.C. Specimens are still preserved fully three thousand years old. The official papers of those extremely 20 PAPER: ITS GENESIS conservative rulers, the Popes, were written upon it as late as the twelfth century. In this long in- terval — 3500 years — between 2400 B. C. and 1 100 A, D., great changes took place in the mode of manufacture — and yet by no means so great in that vast period as the paper manufacture has undergone during the last hundred years. In that fact we have a measure of the comparative rate of progress in mechanical invention in ancient and modern times. An interesting point in the history of papyrus paper is the part it played in the commerce of the world, which shows both the large quantities man- ufactured and the culture of the civilization which demanded it. In this connection it is a sufjo-es- tive fact that the use of papyrus increased when the Greeks obtained possession of Egypt, and both the use increased and the quality improved when Roman domination succeeded to Greek, Its palmiest period was after the Christian era, although for centuries, as well before as after the birth of Christ, it was a most important branch of both manufacture and commerce, the supply be- ing always less than the demand. In the year 15 A. D., a popular commotion arose in Rome on V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 21 account of the scarcity of papyrus. In 290 A. D., Firmus, a rich merchant, who in an attempt to reach tlie throne of the Roman empire captured the city of Alexandria, boasted that among its spoils were so much paj^er and size that its value would support his army. Early in the sixth cen- tury A. D., Theodoric the Great abolished the high tariff upon imported papyrus, and Cassiodorus, a man of letters as well as a Roman senator, wrote a letter congratulating the world on the removal of a tax so injurious to commerce and so unfavorable to the progress of knowledge — a tax upon "an article essentially necessary to the human race" and the general use of which "pol- ishes and immortalizes man." Memphis seems to have been then, and long pre- vious, the chief seat of the manufacture, for the learned senator speaks of it as " a noble invention of ingenious Memphis — that the beautiful texture made in a single spot should cover all the writing desks of the w^orld." In parts of his letter, which we have not quoted, the style of Senator Cassi- odorus displays the flowery bad taste of its day, but the quoted passages sound very much like what a visiting statesman of literary proclivities r A 2 2 PAPER : ITS GENESIS might write in our time, referring to the paper manufactures of Lee, Dalton or Holyoke. We might quote further facts showing the great value of papyrus paper in the commerce of the Egyp- tian, Greek and Roman workl, but it is unneces- sary. It will not be denied that it held a place, compared with other products, quite as important as paper now does. But, although the chief source of the papyrus plant was in Egypt, it was found elsewhere, in less abundance and in less careful protection ; the Egyptian preponderance being similar to that of the southern states of the American Union in the production of cotton. The papyrus, as a writing material, is naturally about equally durable with modern paper; but two extraneous circumstances have conduced to the preservation of a large number of ancient specimens. Over 2.000 rolls have been found in the excavation of the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii which were buried in the famous erup- tion of Mount Vesuvius, A. D., 471 ; but the greater number have been found enwrapped with mummies in the catacombs of Egypt, and pre- served by the exclusion of the air and the anti- septic powers of the substances used in embalm- / \ AA'D ITS REVELATIONS. ~0 ing the dead. The inscriptions upon these rolls are generally in the Egyptian characters, but fre- quently also in the Greek. They have for the most part the brown color into which ink in which soot is a laro-e ino-redient fades, but often the black is as brilliant as though written yes- terday. It is not within our province to discuss the historic or literary value of the writings upon the rolls of papyri which have come down to us, but there is one curious fact that comes within our practical scope. It would have been a bold prophet who dared to tell one of the Pharaohs upon his throne that, in the lapse of ages, and be- fore they had returned to dust, their tombs would be ravaged by their semi-barbarous successors in the land, not only that they might sell to inquisi- tive students from distant lands, the papyri in- scribed with the record of their glories — there might have been some consolation in ihal — but in order to export to regions of which they never dreamed, the linen w^rappings in which their em- balmed bodies, and those of their people, were so carefully enveloped, there to be used as a ma- terial in the manufacture of a better paper than V. r 24 PAPER: ITS GENESIS the Memphis paper-makers ever sent to Rome or Alexandria. And yet it is a fact that the Arabs have phmdered the catacoml^s, disrobed the mum- mies, and sold their wrappings to be sent to Eng- land and America as paper rags. The Egyptian embalmers showed their thrifty habits by using for the inner wrappings second-hand linen, whose darning proves that the housewives of Pharaoh's time were as economical and industrious as ours ; but, for all that, the catacombs are a precious linen mine to the Arab and Bedouin rag-gather- ers, who even save the more perfectly preserved cloth for their own garments, ghastly as we might suppose the robes to be which, for thou- sands of years, have shrouded a corpse. These same thrifty modern Egyptians find also, in the catacombs of their predecessors, a rich coal mine, usinor the wooden mummv cases, and often the mummies themselves, as fuel. Impregnated with the bituminous and other inflammable substances • used in embalming, the wood burns like pitch pine and the bodies "like cannel coal. A Euro- pean explorer, not long ago, bought three asses' loads of mummy cases as the only fuel he could procure to cook his food. How prodigious the AND ITS REVELATIONS. 25 number of bodies buried in these caverns must have been may be estimated by the fact, that, after thus being drawn upon for centuries, they still supply the Arabs with articles of sale eagerly bought by Europeans, and also fuel, and some- times clothing, for themselves. Is the papyrus — the final product, and not the plant — a true paper ? Some good recent writers use expressions from which we can only infer that they so consider it, and yet they often compare it with paper as now made in terms which leave a wide distinction between the two, distinoruishinor the former as a natural and the latter as a manu- factured paper. The writer upon this subject in Knight's Mechanical Dictionary defines paper as " a material made in thin sheets from a pulp of ground rags or other fiber, and used for writing or printing upon or for wrapping.' Further on, he gives a fuller definition of " true paper " as " made of rags or other vegetable fiber, reduced to a pulp, gathered into a sheet, felted in setting, and dried." Worcester and Webster, anions: the uses to which paper may be applied, add to "writing, printing or wrapping," " various other purposes." Webster, correctly as it seems to us, omits the 26 PAPER: ITS GENESIS condition that the pulp must be obtained by grinding rags or other fiber. And although, as we well know, paper, either in its completed state, or in the various stages preceding that, may be, and constantly is, employed for other important purposes than that of a writing or printing ma- terial, do we not daily see true paper that can be used for no other purpose than a writing mate- rial without a total change in its character ? The definition of a thing is strictly the descrip- tion of that thing as it is, without reference to the process by which it may become so, or any other by which it may be transformed to some- thing else. When we go beyond that we trench upon the province of the encyclopaedist, or the essayist. Paper would be paper if we found it growing in leaves upon the trees, as it would be paper still although it could not be, by any pres- sure, changed into papier mache. We do not mean to say that it is not a uniform and valuable quality of paper as we have it, that it can be so transformed and also used for many purposes aside from its original one, but only that this is not an essential property in its character, not a necessary element in the definition of the word. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 27 We ma}^ therefore safely follow Webster in eliminating from the definition of a true paper, the requirement that the pulp from which it is made shall be artificially prepared by grinding, or otherwise. With this variation from the old authorities, the writing material which the old world obtained from the papyrus plant must be recognized as a genuine paper. In the folds of that wonderful reed the old Egyptian paper man- ufacturers found a pulp sufificient for their pur- pose and abundantly supplied with a natural size. Beyond that their processes were coincident with our own, however much they differed in the de- tails of their application. To be sure, with all the beating and pressure it received, the original form of the plant's fiber was not destroyed, but, after thousands of years, may be now plainly seen in the earliest specimens of papyri roll extant. But we do not now destroy the fiber of the sub- stance from which we make paper for the sake of destroying it, but because it is necessary in order that it may become a pulp at all, and thus be ready for a new arrangement of its particles. Paper must be in " thin " sheets. This is a somewhat indefinite requirement. The papyri V. r 28 PAPER: ITS GENESIS were so bulky that a copy of Ovid's Metamor- phoses, which in modern print and paper fills only a very small duodecimo volume, covered eighteen papyri rolls, occupying the space upon a library shelf of as many octavo volumes. A copy of the works of Homer, Virgil, Livy, Sallust, or similar authors, would have filled more than ten times as many rolls. And this fact we must take into consideration when we read of the large number of volumes in the Alexandrian and other ancient libraries ; for a volume meant simply a roll. And yet the papyri rolls were so flexible that, with some little re-moistening, they may, after their immensely prolonged drying, to-day be rolled and unrolled. They had no such thickness as would exclude them from the list of true papers. The papyrus was, then, in our estimation, a true paper; while it still, as we shall presently show, differed widely in some respects from the true paper of to-day. We speak familiarly of paper as being used for various purposes which do not come within the definition we have given ; meaning, not that finished paper is so used, but that its fiber in dif- V. r A ND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 2 9 V. ferent stages of preparation may be turned to those purposes, as the manufacture of papier mache and other articles which are certainly not " thin," and in this respect the papyrus is its equal, for Herodotus tells us that " the priests wear shoes made of the byblos, the sails of the Egyp- tian boats are made of the byblos, the priests read to me out of a byblos roll the names of three hun- dred and thirty kings." The close af^liation between paper, as we now have it, and the vegetable substances which, with more or less preparation, were, in the early ages, used in its place, is indicated by the modern no- menclature of the paper world. Thus we have paper from papyrus, and Bible froni the Egyptian name of the same plant. Folio is from the Latin folium, a leaf, and we still use it, in its translated form, both for the foliage of a tree and the thin sheets of a book. Page is the Latin pagina, a written leaf. Tablets from tabula, a board ; the the board smeared with wax used by the Greeks and Romans to write upon. Library is from the Latin, liber, a book, but previously the inner bark of a tree, from which the material for books was made. It is a happy, but doubtless accidental, r 30 PAPER: ITS GENESIS coincidence, that the same word means free, un- shackled, independent, open and fresh. Schedule is from scheda, the Latin for a strip of papyrus, and afterwards for a sheet of paper. Code and codicil are from codex, the trunk or stem of a tree. Volume is from volunieii, any thing that is rolled or wound up, as sheets of papyrus, and afterwards of parchment, were wound up. In a more liberal sense it was applied to the water which rolls over a fall, and to other rolling and pouring masses. But the first volumes were of papyrus; and each separate roll, as now each bound collection of written or printed leaves, was counted a volume ; a fact which one must always bear in mind when he reads of the immense num- ber of volumes in some ancient libraries. It will moderate his wonder why so few names of the books which composed them have come down to us. We may perhaps as well speak here as else- where of the effect which the cheapness and abundance of printed books has had in reducing the use of sculpture upon stone or other endur- ing material for the preservation of national records. For this, we now trust to the immense V r AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 3 1 numbers and constant reproduction of printed histories. With this aid, the plain, unsculptured shaft on Bunker Hill tells its story as satisfactor- ily, and more eloquently, than Cleopatra's needles, with all their wealth of tediously inscribed hiero- glyphics, tell the history which they were de- signed to commemorate. Parchment, the material most used by the an- cients in the place of paper, next to the prepared papyrus, is the general name for the skins of cer- tain animals, when prepared to write upon, and " for other purposes," It is told in the old books that when Eumenes, king of Pergamos, some 200 years B. C, was ambitious to build up a large library, the Ptolemy then ruling in Egypt, jealous of rivalry in that respect, prohibited the export of papyrus, and that Eumenes finally circumvented him and accomplished his purpose by the inven- tion of parchment, which received its Latin name, pergamena, from that of his kingdom. If the story is true, the zeal and ingenuity of Eumenes availed him little, for, when Marc Antony was one of the masters of the world, he seized the library of Pergamos and presented it to his bril- liant and beautiful but profligate mistress, Cleo- V r 32 PAPER: ITS GENESIS patra, the Egyptian queen, who added it to that, already famous, at Alexandria, whose fate it eventually shared. It is, however, quite certain that the skins of animals were among the earliest materials used in the place afterwards filled by paper. Herodotus tells us that the skins of sheep and goats were in common use as a writing material more than two centuries at least before the time of Eumenes, and other writers more obscurely refer to it as in use long before that time. Rev. Dr. Humphrey Prideaux, an eminent philosophical writer in the early part of the seventeenth century, claimed that the authentic copy of "The Law" which Hilkiah found in the Temple and sent to King Josiah, must have been on parchment, as no other writing material could have lasted for the period of 830 years which lay between the writing of that copy of the Law and the reign of Josiah. The intimate relations between the Jews and the Egyptians, and modern discoveries as to the dur- ability of papyrus paper, somewhat impair the force of Dr. Prideaux's reasoning. But we still have no instance of papyrus paper preserved for so long periods, except when buried with cities r A ND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 3 3 or with men, it has been exckided from the air and other destructive agents. And, setting aside all Hebraic story, we still have the authority of Diodorus and Herodotus to the use, long before the time of Eumenes, by Greeks, Romans and Persians, of skins dressed substantially as parch- ment now is. What may rightly be claimed for Eumenes and those associated with him is, that they made improvements in the manufacture of parchment which better fitted it for use in book- making. If parchment had a later invention than papyrus paper, it has also had a longer continuance. Fine parchment is now made from the skins of sheep and she-goats, but a better article from those of kids, lambs and young calves ; the finest vellum from the skins of still-born calves, kids and lambs. Of the coarser parchments, Knight's Mechanical Dictionary says, with as much truth, and with more wit than is commonly found in encyclo- pccdias — this dictionary being an encyclopaedia: " Coarse parchment for drum heads, etc., is made from calves', wolves', asses' and he-goats' skins. The asses' skin is said to be remarkably sonorous, and it is no wonder, seeing the amount V. r 34 PAPER: ITS GENESIS of noise it has contained at various times. The Greeks found the bones of the ass a superior article for making flutes. The flute and the drum, a rich asinine combination, which probably suggested the Scotch bag-pipe whose drone is nearest to the paternal bray of anything artificial." In the manufacture of parchment to be written upon, the object was to render the skins thin, pliant, and of a uniform surface, free from fatty matter and other obstacles to its receiving the fluid ink properly. The other qualities having already been in a good measure attained, it was probably the aim and success of Eumenes and his associates to prepare the surface of the parch- ment to properly " take " the fluid ink and pre- vent the necessity of recourse to the old paint-like article used with a brush — a much slower and more costly method of writing or copying. Knight thus describes the modern manufacture of parchment: "After removing the wool, the skin is steeped in lime and then stretched on a wooden frame : its face is then scraped with a half round knife. The next process consists in rubbing the skin, previously sprinkled with pow- dered chalk or slacked lime, and scraping it with V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 35 a knife. It is then rubbed with a lamb skin hav- ing the wool on, so as to smooth the surface and raise a very fine nap; after which, if any greasy matter remains, it is again steeped in the lime pit for a few days. The grain surface is then re- moved with a knife and the skin pumiced, if necessary, to give it an equal thickness." A peculiarity of the manufacture, not men- tioned by Knight, is that the frame, technically " the herse," upon which the skins are stretched, by the best makers, is surrounded by screws, much like the pegs by which the violin is tuned. This is probably a modern invention, the an- cients having used a hoop, as the smaller manu- facturers now do. But, even with the herse, there is no automatic power, but merely a use of natural mechanical forces applied by hand. A fine proof of the value of parchment is found in the fact that, during the dark ages, the monks used the rolls containing the great works of an- tiquity — and which their more enlightened prede- cessors had treasured up in the monastic libraries — as a material on which to indite their supersti- tious legends and scholastic controversial essays. Upon the revival of learning, chemical science 36 PAPER: ITS GENESIS found the means to remove the inferior ink of the convents and revive the better, which had been erased. In those curiously restored manu- scripts — known as palimpsests — some of the choicest classics have been preserved as perfectly as though they had been hidden in the ashes of Herculaneum or the catacombs of the Ptolemies. AND ITS REVELATIONS. 2>1 PART 11. The Second Era of Paper Making — Hand-Made Paper from Vegetable Pulp. It being admitted that the papyri rolls were essentially a true paper, and that parchment is well adapted to some of the purposes for which paper is used, and in some degree to others, it is nevertheless true that the great revolution in the fundamental principles of the manufacture took place when paper was first made of rags, or other vegetable fiber, reduced to a pulp, gathered into a sheet, felted in setting, and dried. "Human invention," it is said, "had in this case been anticipated by the wasp, which may be considered as a professional paper-maker, devot- ing a large portion of her time and energies to the production of this fabric, of which she builds her nest. For this purpose she seeks dry wood '\ PAPER: ITS GENESIS — fence rails and weather-beaten boards beino- a favorite source of supply — which she saws, or rasps, by mastication, into a paste, which, mixed with a natural size exuded for the purpose, she spreads into a sheet in a manner truly marvelous." As neither the wasp, hornet, or any other in- sect which operates in a similar manner, ever used its product as a writing material — perhaps from ignorance of the bleaching and polishing processes — we have no means of determining the date when the insect manufacturer began : author- ities differ as to the probabilities — all the way from six thousand to six million, or more, years. The date of the invention by man of the art of paper-making from a vegetable pulp, prepared artifically from some vegetable fiber, is somev/hat less uncertain, but it varies still over three hun- dred years in the estimate of different historians. The earliest estimates place it in the reign of Wan-te of the Chinese imperial dynasty, which lasted from the years 179 to 156 before Christ; the latest at about 200 A. D. So far as we have any information, the Chinese have an undoubted title to the honor of the in- vention. Four kinds of paper have been made \ AND ITS REVELATIONS. 39 in China at least ever since the latest of these dates, and it may be that their invention or im- provement from time to time caused the diversity of opinions we have mentioned. All these kinds appear to have been known as early as A. D. 250, and to have experienced very little change from that time until the Celestial Empire was recently opened to the influences of our terrestrial civilization. These papers are known as Rice, Silk, Bamboo and Bark, Rice paper is a material so delicate and filmy that at the first glance one would think it illy adapted to receive writing or printing ; but it is much used for those purposes, and we have seen a beautiful little volume composed of it and filled with exquisite paintings of flowers. It is made from the pith of a leguminous plant, which the Chinese import from India and the island of Formosa, where it grows in abundance. The pith, having been prepared of the desired length for the sheet, is cut spirally into a thin slice, which is then flattened, pressed and dried. It obtains its name by receiving a sizing wholly or prin- cipally of rice water. The similarity of this proc- ess to the preparation of papyrus is so striking 40 PAPER: ITS GENESIS as to render it probable that it was suggested by it. Bark paper is made from the smaller branches of a variety of the mulberry tree. The bark, after being separated from the stem by boiling in lye, is macerated in water for several days ; the outer part scraped off, and the inner boiled and stirred in lye until it separates. It is then washed in a pan or sieve, and worked by the hands into a pulp, which is afterwards spread on a table and beaten fine with a mallet. It is next placed in a tub with an infusion of rice and a root called oreni, and all thoroughly mixed. The sheets are formed by dipping a mould made of strips of bul- rushes, confined in a frame into the vat. After moulding, the sheets are laid one upon another with strips of reed between. A board loaded with weights is then laid upon the pile to express the water, and, when that is accomplished, they are separated and dried in the sun. This paper is even more delicate than the rice; so much so that when it is necessary to write on both sides of a page two must be glued together. Suppos- ing, as the natural order seems to suggest, that the rice paper was the first and the bark the r "\ AND ITS REVELATIONS. 41 second made by the Chinese, we have here the first appearance of the pulping process in the manufacture. The bamboo paper, made from the fibre of that plant, reduced to a pulp and gathered in films, is, however, very ancient, and possibly older than the bark. The silk paper is the victim of a misnomer, arising from the misinformation of early travelers, which it has been found almost impossible to correct, for it is commonly believed to be made of silk. Silk is an animal, not a vegetable, sub- stance, and, although a few silken rags or a little refuse silk may occasionally be mixed with other material, they cannot by themselves be reduced to a pulp suitable for making paper. The silk paper of China is made, like our own, from cotton and linen rags, hemp, unmanufactured cotton and the like, sometimes mingled with wood and bam- boo pulp and possibly with a little silk. The rags, cotton and hemp, are prepared by being cut and well washed. They are then bleached, and by natural maceration of twelve days' duration converted into a pulp. This is made into balls weighii^g about four pounds, which, having been saturated with water, are spread upon a frame of r 42 PAPER: ITS GENESIS fine reeds and pressed under heavy weights. The drying is completed by suspension of the sheets upon the wall of a proper room ; and they are finished by being coated with a gum size, and polished with some smooth, hard substance. The sheets are sometimes of very large dimensions — reaching twelve feet in length with a correspond- ing breadth, the moulds being managed by the aid of pulleys. The art of paper-making spread from China throughout Central Asia, and there the Saracens found it during their conquests in Bukhara, about A. D. 704. It is curious, in this connection, to note the method of the paper manufacture as it was found by Moncroft in his travels a little before 18 18, in the neighboring region of Thibet: At a little distance from us, and close to the river, two people are engaged in preparations for making paper. They have two large bags of old paper that has been written upon, manufactured from the bark of the Latbarua. A few large flat stones are placed near the edge of the river where a stream has been divided from the main current by a low bank of sods. On the grass are two frames of wood, covered on one side with fine cloth, the other being open, thus forming a shallow tray. The workmen begin by dipping some of the old paper in the water, and then beat it upon a flat stone with a small round one until it is reduced to a pulp. One of the trays is then placed in the broad part of the canal, AND ITS REVELATIONS. 43 leaving a space for the water to run under it. The pulp is then put into a gear pump with water and worked into a fine paste. It is then poured upon the cloth and thus sunk two or three inches in the stream, so that the water rises through the cloth into the tray and still further dilutes the pulp. The floating impurities are picked, and the pulp agitated by hand until it is supposed to be sufficiently clear, when the current of water is lessened. The workman sees if the cloth be equally covered with pulp, and if any spots look thin, he stirs with his finger some other that appears too thickly covered, and raises a cloud of paste which he leads to the thin place, and by making a little eddy with a gradually decreasing motion deposits it there. When the sheet is, by this simple process rendered even, it is raised out of the water and laid upon the ground to dry. After the greater portion of the moisture is extracted it is gradually inclined from its horizontal position, until when nearly dry it becomes upright. When per- fectly hard, one corner of the large sheet is lifted from the cloth and then the whole detached by hand. It is a long way from this primitive process and these rude appHances to the costly modern paper mill filled with complicated machinery and skilled manufacturers. But it is the first step which is half the journey, and the proverbial persistence of the orientals in adhering to old methods renders it probable that the paper- making which, in 1817, Mr. Moncroft found in Thibet was very like that found A. D. 704 by the Arabian conqueror in Bukhara: somewhat r 44 PAPER: ITS GENESIS more rude, perhaps, in its appliances, but essen- tially the same in its operations. The material for the Bukhara paper is, how- ever, said to have been cotton. At least that was the material used by the Arabians when that enterprising and cultivated people carried the manufacture home. In the eighth century the Saracens made large conquests in Spain, where they established the flourishing Kingdom of Grenada, rich in many arts, among which was that of paper-making for which they at first, probably of necessity, used flax, although in their old Arabian home cotton had been the chief material. Cotton, however, soon resumed its reign. The raw cotton being used, the product was yellow and brittle and the Saracens made little improvement in it. Christian Spaniards, who had learned the art, remedied the difficulty in 1085 A. D., by substituting rags, and the same class, in Xatina, an ancient city of Valencia, in 1 151, made the further improvement of stamping the rags, cotton, etc., into pulp, by water power. The paper of this city became famous, and was exported both to the East and the West. Cotton paper became general about the close V. AND ITS REVELATIONS. 45 of the twelfth century, but in the fourteenth, havins: been found as it was then made, not to possess sufficient strength or solidity for many purposes, it was almost entirely superseded by that made of hemp and linen rags; not weakened in their fibre in bleaching as they are in the present mode, which destroys the natural gum. These old linen papers, well sized with gelatine, retain their original qualities in many specimens even to the present day. The manufacture of this class of paper became common in France, Spain and Italy in the fourteenth century. The first German mill was built at Nuremberg, in 1390. There are claims of the existence of a document written upon English linen paper bearing the date of 1320; but the best English authority which we are able to consult believes that the manufacture did not exist there until near the end of the fifteenth century, when the " Bartolomceiis " of Wynkin de Worde, the father of English typography, (published in 1496) speaks of a superior kind of paper made for that work by Thomas Tate at his mills in Stevenhenge, Hertfordshire. In 1498, Henry VII. gave this mill the munificent subsidy of sixteen shillings 46 PAPER: ITS GENESIS and eight pence, which it does not seem to have survived, for we hear no more of it, although Tate Hved until 15 14. In 1588, one Spielman, a German, and jeweler to her majesty. Queen Elizabeth, established a mill at Dartford, and got knighted for his enterprise. But, probably owing to the civil wars and the political disturbances connected with them, it was long before the paper manufacture flourished in .Great Britain. While France, by the superior quality of her product, was enabled to export it in immense quantities to all the countries of Europe — 2,000,000 livres in value in the year 1658 to Holland alone — England was importing almost her entire con- sumption. In 1663, says one authority, she received paper to the value of ^100,000 from Holland alone ; evidently, however, the product of France, as according to the same authority the first paper mill in Holland was not built until 1685. So slow was the progress of the manufacture in England that in Anderson's Commercial Dictionary, printed at London in 1826, it is stated that paper was first manufact- ured in the Kingdom in 1690, and that up to that time she paid ^100,000 annually for that r V. AND ITS REVELATIONS. 47 imported from France. In 1690 the war with that country at once cut off this supply and called for high duties upon that received from other sources. Even the prospect of this state of affairs had in the year before rendered paper so dear that printing almost entirely ceased, except for absolutely necessary purposes ; and now, in 1690, some French Protestant refugees, who had settled in England began the manufact- ure of white writing paper — that, then recently, made there being brown. The business did not, however, become general. In 1696 a bill was brought into Parliament to lay a tax of 35 per cent, ad valorem upon all imported paper, parch- ment and vellum, 20 per cent, upon that made in England, and 17 upon that in the hands of dealers for sale. While this bill was pending, one company published a protest in which they stated that there were not above one hundred paper mills in all England, of which none, except their own, made anything except brown, and the coarsest kinds of white, paper. Their own prod- uct was worth ^8,000 per annum ; the others would not average ^200 ; that of all England would not exceed ^28,000. All the parchment, J r 48 PAPER: ITS GEN:^S1S vellum and paste-board made or imported in 1695 was not worth more than ^10,000. The bill nevertheless became a law, and, not- withstandinsf the slifjht discrimination in favor of the British manufacture, we are not surprised to learn that in 1713 it had "fallen into decay;" but rather to find that in that year Thomas Wat- kin, a London stationer, succeeded in reviving it, and soon carried it to high repute and perfection. It increased so that in 1721 the whole quantity of paper made in Great Britain rose to 300,000 reams, or about two-thirds the whole consump- tion of the realm. The value of that made two years later, in 1723, was estimated at ^780,000. But it was many years still, after this, before the English manufacture acquired an equality with that of the continent of Europe; for it is emphatically stated that James Whatman, who in 1770 established a superior manufacture at Maidstone in Kent, and became celebrated in his art, had first worked as a journeyman in some of the principal paper mills " on the Continent." After this, the work prospered. In 1799 twenty-four millions pounds of rags, of which over one-third were imported from the Continent, V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 49 were made into paper in England, and in 1800 the duty on paper manufactured in the Kingdom was ^315,805. Favoring laws and the zeal of the manufacturer had made that change from the statement of the Protest of 1696. The introduction of the paper manufacture into the British colonies in North America ante- dated, however, even the era of that protest; and the product seems to have been not of the quality styled "brown," although doubtless, not of the purity which would delight a printer of 1 88 1. Before James Whatman's enterprise was well under way the amount of the paper-making in the colonies was so great as to intensely dis- gust their remarkably affectionate, cherishing mother beyond the seas. William Rettinghuysen, whose name anglicized into Rittenhouse, was afterwards rendered famous by his great grandson, David, the mathematician and astronomer, emigrated from Holland among the early settlers of Germantown, Pa., now a suburb of Philadelphia; and we are not sure that the family name will not finally find its chief and most lasting honor in the fact that its first ancestor in America established in 1690 the first / \ 50 PAPER: ITS GENESIS paper mill in America. In this work he was associated with William Bradford, for whose character we must refer the reader to Franklin's Autobiography. The mill was built upon a small stream in Roxborough near Philadelphia, still called Paper-Mill Run. Every household in the northern colonies then made linen from the flax grown as a staple upon almost every farm, and it was used for the purposes for which cotton is now chiefly employed; so that the rags and worn- out articles of this material furnished abundant stock for one mill. We condense the following statement of the other paper mills in America previous to the year 1800 from Joel Munsell's admirable "Chronology of the Origin and Progress of Paper- Making." The second mill in America was built in 17 10 at Crefeld, now a part of Germantown, by Wil- liam De Frees, a connection of the Rittenhouse family. In 1697 William Bradford, a rather speculative sort of person, leased his quarter part of the Roxborough mill to William and Nicholas Rittenhouse for ten years, at the annual rent of seven reams of printing paper, ten reams of good writing paper and two reams of blue V AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 5 I paper. In 1724 Bradford applied to the execu- tive council of New York for the exclusive right to make paper in that province for fifteen years. Not getting it he did not have a chance to sell out to some practical manufacturer. It is need- less to say that he built no mill himself. In 1828 William Demees and John Gorgas, who had been apprentices of Rittenhouse, erected the third paper mill in Pennsylvania, and are " said to have made paper resembling tanned asses' skin from a species of rotten stone found in the vicinity, which was prepared for use by being thrown into the fire for a short time." If there is any truth in the story the stone must have been fibrous asbestos, and might have remained in a fire more than a short time without hurting it. In 1854 one Maniere took out a patent in England for making a lire-proof paper out of this substance : but it was known in the time of Pliny. In 1728 the General Court of Massachusetts granted to a company the exclu- sive right of making paper in the Province for ten years on condition that in the first fifteen months they should make 115 reams of brown paper, and sixty reams of printing paper; the r 52 PAPER: ITS GENESIS second year the same with the addition of fifty reams of writing paper, and each year afterwards the same with the further addition of twenty-five reams of superior writing paper. The same vice clogged the paper manufacture which for many years retarded the progress of the woolen : each maker, instead of perfecting himself in a single branch of his business, undertook all; the same mill in one case making broadcloths, satinets, cassimeres, etc., and in the other the several classes of paper. The first paper mill in New England — not then specially a manufacturing section — went into operation at Milton, Massachusetts, in 1730, under the patent granted two years before. The manager was David Henchman, a Boston book- seller, who received some aid from the General Court, and in 1731 exhibited creditable specimens of his work before that august body. The mill was discontinued after a few years from lack of a skilled workman; but it was revived in 1770 — a citizen of Boston obtaining for a British soldier stationed there, a furlough long enough for him to put it in operation ; a favor which the powers over the water would have hardly approved. V AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 5 3 The public interest in this mill is shown by an announcement in the News Letter \\\ 1769 that "the bell cart will go through Boston before the end of next month, to collect rags for the paper mill at Milton, when all people who will encour- age the paper manufactory may dispose of them ;" and the public zeal was spurred by the adding of the following poetic effusion : " Rags are as beauties which concealed lie, But when in paper how it charms the eye. Pray save your rai A ND ITS REVELA TTONS. 6 9 labor. A considerable number of the skilled workmen employed, probably twenty-five or thirty during the first thirty years, were Englishmen. A matter of some interest belonging to the era of the hand manufacture is the derivation of the names of certain classes of paper from curious water-marks of the, old makers. One of the old- est — as far back as 1539 — consisted of a hand pointing to a star ; whence came the name of " hand paper." A favorite mark about the same time was a jug or pot, and so came " pot paper." When the Puritans had succeeded in overthrow- ing the royal government and establishing the English Commonwealth, they substituted for the royal arms, which had before distinguished a cer- tain class of paper, a fool's cap and bells, and from that piece of grim ridicule the " foolscap " sheet took its name. A postman's horn indented upon another size made it " post," and with the addition of the city where it was first made, " Bath post." V. ■\ 70 PAPER: ITS GENESIS V. PART III. The Manufacture of Paper by MacJihiery — The Manufacture of Paper by Hand. Great as the advance had been from primitive methods, paper-making at the close of the last century was still a tedious, difficult, and therefore costly, operation. But if there was among manu- facturers any longing for improvement by means of machinery, it was far from hopeful. They seem to have been resigned to the separate moulding and finishing of each sheet by hand, although it required much time, as well as extra- ordinary care and skill in each workman from en- gineer to lay-boy. And yet the first and most important step had been taken towards the inven- tion of a machine by whose aid, chiefly, the proc- ess has been rendered so nearly automatic as to require comparatively little care and skill on the A ND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 7 I part of subordinate workmen, and so hastened that rags received at the mill on one day may be turned out the next day as paper, instead of re- quiring three months as formerly ; while, although the machine is itself very expensive, the cost of the product is reduced fully one-half. An Eng- lish writer, speaking of what is accomplished by this machine in mills known to him, says : " In the brief space of tJiree minutes, and in the short distance of thirty or forty feet, a continuous stream of fluid pulp is made into paper, dried, polished and cut into sheets. The paper thus produced is moderate in price, and for many pur- poses superior to that made by hand. It is of uniform thickness, and can be fabricated of any desirable dimensions. It does not require to be sorted, trimmed or hung up in the dry-house — operations which in the hand manufacture led to defects in about one sheet out of every five." This extreme speed, however, is not usual, nor indeed is the manufacture from the rags in one day very common, although in case of necessity in book and newspaper it is not infrequently done. In the English mills the same may be true of writing paper, which is there completely V. PAPER: ITS GENESIS K. finished by machinery. The best American writ- ing papers — known as loft dried — after being- sized, dried, and cut into sheets, are taken from the racks hung in lofts for complete drying and finished by hand, with the aid of powerful calen- dering presses. But even these, if need be, can be finished in five days from the rags. The early history of the machine by which the achievements specified by the English writer are accomplished — and which we now call the Four- drinier Paper Machine — is a noble one in itself, but sad as regards the men to whom the world is indebted for it — literally indebted ; for, except in pitifully scant honors to their names, small part of the debt has ever been cancelled. Most of them died in poverty, to which they were reduced from affluence by their expenditures in this be- half ; and in biographical dictionaries which care- fully preserve the memories of petty politicians, obscure divines and the like class of " notables," we look in vain for the names of Robert, Gamble, Fourdrinier and Donkin. It was in the year 1798, when the throes of the French Revolution were beginning to subside under the rule of Napoleon, that Louis Robert, / AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 7 3 sometimes called a clerk and sometimes a work- man, in the mill of Louis Didot at Essonne, an- nounced that he had invented a machine by which he could, with the aid of one man, make sheets of paper fifty feet long and twelve wide. But he apparently left this incomplete to pass to a more important device in the same direction. He had an ardent passion for invention, and was probably both a clerk and workman. He was ridiculed, and even reproached, for wasting his time and energies in a pursuit which " could never amount to anything ; " but he persevered manfully, and soon completed a small working" model — " not larger than a bird-organ " — upon which he made endless, or continuous, paper, al- though not wider than tape. From this model a machine was constructed, which in 1 799, at the Essonne mill, made a continuous web of paper, twenty-four inches wide— a size at that time much used in France. The government awarded Rob- ert a patent upon his invention for fifteen years, and a gratuity of 8,000 francs. Shortly after- wards he sold to M. Leger Didot his patent and small working model for 25,000 francs, to be paid in installments ; but the payments not being made r 74 PAPER: ITS GENESIS according to agreement, he recovered his patent by a decree of court dated June 23, iSoi. The machine operated in 1799 was very im- perfect, and the distracted condition of France for many years previous had left neither the wealth of its capitalists nor the skill of its me- chanics in a plight to aid in the necessary im- provements. In this state of affairs, while the invention was still in the hands of M. Leger Didot, he proposed to his brother-in-law, Mr. John Gamble, an Englishman, to seek the aid of British capital and skill. Gamble assented, and the scheme was carried out, according to one author- ity, with the permission of the French govern- ment for the transfer ; which seems hardly prob- able as, to say nothing of the intense international jealousies of the period, France and England were at that moment engaged in a bitter and critical war. But, at any rate Didot somehow got safely over the Channel, towards the end of the year 1800, and with his small model of Robert's ma- chine, proceeded to London. In the meantime Gamble, who had preceded him, and who held some office under the British government, had succeeded, by his personal influence and by ex- V. ~^ AND ITS REVELATIONS. 75 hibiting long rolls of the paper made at Essonne, in enlisting the sympathies of a firm of wealthy and liberal capitalists, Messrs. Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, then the leading stationers of Lon- don. Thus happy in early obtaining the aid of capital, the adventurers were equally fortunate in the employment of mechanical skill and genius. Dartford in Kent, long noted for the manufacture of paper and paper-making machinery, had in Hall's engineering establishment, all the tools then known which would be required in the im- proved construction of the novel automaton ; and, what was of still more consequence, they found in Mr. Hall's assistant, Bryan Donkin, a youno- and zealous machinist who combined precision of workmanship with fertility of invention in a re- markable degree. To this gentleman they en- trusted the development of the inchoate inven- tion ; and in 1803, after almost three years of the most intense application, he produced a self-act- ing machine for making an endless web of paper, which, being set up at St. Neot's, under the supervision of Mr. Gable, " worked in such a man- ner as to astonish every spectator." From that time Mr. Donkin devoted all his r 76 PAPER: ITS GENESIS talents and energies to the progressive improve- ment of " that admirable apparatus," which, in the opinion of Dr. Ure, "has by the unfailing regu- larity, precision, promptitude and productiveness of its work, earned for him a place along with Watt, Wedgewood and Arkwright, in the temple of mechanical fame." In the year 185 i the firm of Donkin & Co., of which he was the senior partner, made their 191st Fourdrinier machine. They had sold 83 for Great Britain, 23 for France, 46 for Germany, 22 for the north of Europe, 14 for Italy and the south of Europe, 2 for America and I for India. In April, 1801, Mr. Gamble was granted a patent upon the machine as it then was, and in June, 1803, another upon certain improvements, both of which he assigned in 1804 to the Fourdri- niers. In 1808 he assigned his whole interest in the concern to the same firm, having lost in the enterprise both his fortune and eight years of irk- some diligence. In the meantime, in August, 1807, his patent of fourteen years from April, 1801, was extended by an act of Parliament for seven years longer. The proprietors showed good reason, in the enormous cost of their experi- V r AND ITS RE VELA TIONS. 7 7 ments and the national importance of the inven- tion, why the extension should be fourteen years instead of seven. There was no objection to the longer period in the Commons, nor to its justice in the House of Lords ; but the committee of the latter said : " Take seven years now, and if your remuneration does not prove sufficient in tliat period, come again and you shall have seven more." And so it would have been, but for an unworthy trick of Lord Lauderdale, the sole op- ponent of the extension, who cunningly got in- serted in the rules of the House of Lords, a standing order that no extension of a patent should be granted except toHhe original inventor. It was in vain represented that Henry Fourdri- nier was substantially such. But even before the expiration of the patent as granted, the generous and enterprising Fourdri- niers, who had withdrawn ^60,000 from their sta- tionery business to further the invention, became bankrupt ; so many difficulties had they encoun- tered, and so little was the aid which they received either from the government or the paper manufact- urers of the country they were serving so well. And, not only did they receive no aid, but, after r 78 PAPER: ITS GENESIS the bankruptcy, none of their patent dues could be collected, although twelve suits were brought in chancery; "that unscientific judge," Lord Chancellor Tenterden, sustaining certain frivolous and merely technical "objections to their well specified patent." Says Dr. Ure : "The pirat- ical tricks practiced by many considerable paper- makers against the patentees are humiliating to human nature in a civilized, and sol disant Christian community. Many of them have owned, since the bankruptcy of the house removed the fear of prosecution, that they owed them from ^2,000 to ^3,000 each." The Fourdriniers died in poverty ; Henry, at the age of ninety, as late as 1855. In 1806 the patentees claimed that, while it cost sixteen shillings to make a hundred weight of paper by hand, with their machine it could be produced for three shillings and sixpence ; so that, there being 900 vats in the United Kingdom, with an annual production of 432,000 cwts., the saving, if the machine were used by all the mills would be ;^ 2 64,000; or more than three-quarters of the entire cost. Subsequent statements of the reduction of cost and increase of production r AND ITS REVELATIOXS. 79 at various stages in the improvement of the machine give the impression that the sanguine temperament of the patentees led them into some Httle exaggeration of the probable saving of expense ; but the genius of Mr. Donkin soon brought it to surpass what was claimed. Thus, while in 1806 five men were required to tend each machine, in 181 3 three sufificed ; and these with- out giving that close attention, or necessarily pos- sessing the same skill which was previously demanded. In 1806 the machine was capable of doing the work of six vats in twelve hours ; in 18 1 3 that capacity was doubled, and the expense reduced to one-quarter what it was. The advantages over hand-making paper claimed in 1 8 1 3 were : i st. The superior strength, firmness and appearance of the finished product. 2d. After leaving the machine the paper requires less drying, pressing and pasting, and conse- quently comes sooner to market. 3d. The quantity of broken paper and re-tree is as nothing compared with what it is in the hand-making. 4th. The machine makes paper with cold water; in hand-making, warm was required. 5th. It is durable and little liable to need repairs. One V r 80 PAPER: ITS GENESIS that has been in use in Hertfordshire for three years cost only ten pounds annually for repairs. 6th. As paper mills are almost universally run by streams which vary considerably from time to time in their power, an important advantage will arise from the use of the machine. The com- mon mill is limited by the number of its vats, so that no advantage can be taken of the accessions of power which frequently happen in the course of the year ; but where the machine is employed, as scarcely any mills are capable of preparing, stuff for twelve vats, every accession of power will increase the product without adding to the cost. 7th. The manufacturer can suspend or resume his work at pleasure ; and he is, moreover, relieved from the perplexing difficulties and loss conse- quent upon the perpetual combinations for the increase of wages." We have given this statement the more fully as, besides its main object, it throws some light upon the state of the manufacture in England during the early part of the 19th century. The price of the machines in 1807, by Donkin's sched- ule, varied, according to capacity, from /'715 to ^695 for those driven by belting, and from ^750 V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. to /^ 1,040 for those driven by wheels. As each successive improvement simplified the construc- tion, the price was probably at least not increased until larger sizes with attachments for various purposes were introduced. In the year 1S39, two hundred and eighty Four- drinier machines were working in Great Britain and Ireland, making daily in the aggregate six- teen hundred miles of paper, from four to five feet wide. The invention had lowered the price of paper fifty per cent, and added ^400,000 to the revenues of the United Kingdom ; and, yet, in the multitude of pensions which flowed from the British treasury to all sorts of persons, worthy and unworthy, we cannot learn that any went to relieve the poverty of Henry or Sealy Fourdri- nier. It is not republics alone which are notably ungrateful. Some improvements have been made in the Fourdrinier machine since 181 3, and several most valuable inventions have been added to, or incor- porated in it. In the original construction of the machine, the lateral shaking given to the wire web injured the fabric of the pulp by bring- ing its fibres more closely together breadthwise V. r PAPER: ITS GENESIS than lengthwise, which tended to produce long ribs in the surface of the paper. In 1828 George Dickinson, an English paper-maker, devised a mode of obviating this by giving an up and down motion. But Mr. Donkin introduced a method of governing the vibrations " in a much more mechanical way," which seems to be the slice ; a thin blade of steel, which crosses the wire web a short distance from the point where the beaten pulp first reaches it, at a height of about an inch and a half from its surface. All the " stuff " must pass under this, and when it emerges the surface is not only freed from lumps, but the longitudinal waves previously very perceptible have nearly or quite disappeared, and are not reproduced, the motion imparted to the semi- liquid pulp being rather of a shivery character. But the greatest difficulty in the use of the machine, as first constructed, was to remove the water from the pulp and condense it with suf- ficient rapidity to prevent it becoming ivater galled, and permit the web to proceed directly to the drying cylinders. In 1830 John Wilks, a partner of Bryan Donkin, remedied this by adding a perforated and channeled roller, called a V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. «3 V. dandy, which facilitates the escape of the water at this stage in the progress of the web. In the same year Thomas Barrett, another EngHshman, invented a method of introducing the water-mark in continuous paper, by means of engraved plates of thin metal attached to the surface of the "dandy." "It is to this ingenious man," says Munsell, " that we are also indebted for the improved means of finishing paper, owing to the perfection he attained in making cast- iron rollers more true than was possible by the old mode of turning them in a lathe. His method, which is now adopted in finishing all rollers requiring great accuracy, consists in grind- ing the rollers together for many weeks, merely allowing a small stream of water to run over them without emery or other grinding material. In 1830, Richard Ibotsford, an Englishman, invented an apparatus for separating the knots from paper stuff, which the sieves or strainers in use could not do effectually. It was previously necessary, both in hand and machine making, to pick lumps from the paper after it was made, which left it often in a damaged state, and still did not entirely free it from imperfections which r 84 PAPER: ITS GENESIS were liable to seriously damage type and wood cuts. In 182 1, T. B. Crompton, still another Englishman, took out a patent for drying and finishing paper by means of a cloth against heated cylinders, and also for the application of shears to cut the paper into suitable lengths as it issues from the machine. In 1831, Edward Pine of Troy, N. Y., and E. N. Fourdrinier patented a very ingenious apparatus for cutting continuous paper into lengths. The above and other inventions, made since 18 1 3, have been, or may be, applied to the Fourdrinier machine, of which a fine specimen built about 1876, by George Bertram of Edin- burgh, is thus described in Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary : " It is of the class known as an eighty-inch machine — that is, the endless wire web upon which the pulp flows, is eighty inches wide and thirty-three feet long; being capable of forming paper over six feet wide, after the edges are trimmed, and of indefinite length. The machine is sixty-eight feet long." The largest made by Donkin in the year 1806 was about thirty feet long, and made paper only fifty- four inches wide. V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 85 The operation of the Bertram machine is thus described : The pulp — (whole stuff) from the heating cylinder is admitted to the receptacle, denomi- nated a chest, through a strainer, which consists of a sheet of metal perforated with slits. It is here constantly agitated by a stirrer — or revolv- ing frame — and is then driven in a stream into a second and smaller chamber, where it is again stirred by a similar agitator. After passing over a channeled plate, by which extraneous matters of greater specific gravity than the pulp are arrested, it is then delivered on to the endless wire web or apron, which answers to the mould of the hand manufacturer. To this the lateral, or sidewise shaking movement is given, — in imi- tation also of the hand-maker, — in order to dis- tribute the fluid pulp evenly over the surface. This wire web is supported by a large number of small rollers. The width of the paper is gov- erned by deckle straps, — answering to the deckle frame of the hand manufacturer, which are car- ried by rollers, their tension being regulated by a peculiar device. Next, a vacuum box from which the air is partially exhausted by a set of air r 86 PAPER: ITS GENESIS >v pumps, withdraws a portion of the moisture from the sheet as it passes over it. The sheet is then carried, still on the wire apron between cloth- covered rollers, by the lower one of which, and others specially provided, the apron returns to the point from which it started, to receive a fresh supply of pulp, and again pursue its round. The paper sheet, parting from the apron, is transferred to a felt blanket, which conveys it to the press rolls. These are solid, and over the upper one is a thin edge-bar, which removes adhering particles of the fiber from the roll, and also serves to arrest the progress of the paper should it stick to the roll, thus preventing injury to the blanket. These rolls are adjusted in their bearings by a screw, so as to exert greater or less power, as may be desired. The blanket then conveys the sheet to a position where it is received by a second set of press-rollers, which farther compress it, and expel more of its moist- ure. After passing the press rolls, the paper is received upon a second endless blanket, which carries it to the first of a series of steam-heated cylinders, between which it is partially dried and then conveyed between other pressure rollers to V AND ITS REVELATIONS. 87 a second set of drying cylinders. Thence, after being subjected successively to the pressing and stretching action of a series of rollers, it is delivered on to a cylindrical reel. Registering mechanism indicates when the proper quantity has thus been delivered; when the reel is re- moved and a new one substituted. In modern machine-paper-making there are some variations from old methods in the proc- esses, both before the pulp reaches the machine and after the paper leaves it in an unfinished state ; some of which we enumerate. Two kinds of sizing are used, vegetable and animal; both generally made in the mill. For- merly animal size, or gelatine, was employed exclusively ; but when mixed with the pulp in the vat, it was found to injure the felt with which it came in contact in subsequent stages of manu- facture, and also the paper, and in 1S27, Canson Brothers, in France, patented a substitute, the base of which was wax ; and in the same year, M. Delcambre produced another, the base being rosin, to which powdered alum was added. This last is the vegetable size now used, and when pre- pared, it closely resembles mustard prepared for r PAPER: ITS GENESIS the table. Gelatine continues to be used as an animal size, and is still made from the shreds of parchment and raw hide, chiefly the latter. Be- fore it is dissolved for the size bath, it is a beauti- ful light amber-colored jelly, and cannot be dis- tinguished either by the eye or the taste from the table luxury known as "calves' foot jelly;" indeed, it is essentially the same thing, and properly flavored, is often served up under that name by high-toned caterers to unsuspecting epicures. While the paper manufacture was of small extent in America, the shreds of hide from which the gelatine is made were furnished by the native tanneries, now they are chiefly imported, although there seems no sufficient reason for it. The veg- etable size is mixed with the pulp in the vat, when it is intended for printing paper, and some- times, when it is desired to make a specially hard writing paper. It thus becomes thoroughly mixed with the fiber. This is all the sizing re- quired for printing paper. When writing paper is made, no size is ordinarily mixed with the pulp ; but in the special cases, when it is so mixed, an exterior coating of gelatine is after- Vv^ards applied. V AND ITS REVELATIONS. ~\ 89 V. Some improvements have also been made in the rag engines so that they stand more firmly, and are more neatly made, and also more freely discharge the water. Mr. E. D. Jones, of Pitts- field, has patented valuable devices for the more easy, convenient and satisfactory elevation and depression of the cutting cylinder, (or rolls) and for other purposes connected with the same. Mr. Jones has also patented an improved washer, and a back fall which enables the machine to turn the stuff more rapidly without overflowing. Messrs. Smith, Winchester & Co., of South Windham, Connecticut, manufacture the Jordan beating engine for the purpose of cleaning stuff after it has been three-quarters beaten, which is said to work so perfectly that nothing can pass through it without being brushed. The water for the rag engines must be of the purest quality, and is now generally supplied from springs, through pipes, and a hydrant fur- nished with a stop cock. Some of these springs furnish an immense amount of water. Puitips have been invented for the transfer of half stuff, and for similar purposes ; and a fan pump for various purposes, but particularly for conveying r 90 PAPER: ITS GENESIS back the water which passes through the wire on the Fourdrinier machine. Indeed there is no end to the devices which have been invented to perfect the engines and the machine, and facih- tate their working. We have enumerated merely a few, which seem to work a decided change in some important portions of the manufacture. Printing paper is finished when it has passed the drying cylinders last spoken of in the descrip- tion of the machine, and it is there cut into sheets by the shears. In the further finishing of writing paper, the common English and the common American practice differ. In the English mills, the gelatin- ous sizing, the subsequent drying, the cutting into sheets, the calendering and the folding, are all done automatically by machines attached to the Fourdrinier, through which the paper suc- cessively passes without aid from the workmen. This gives rapid work, but the product is not considered absolutely perfect, and it is probably for this reason, that some hand-making establish- ments still exist in great Britain. The American manufacturers, endeavoring to combine the ad- vantas^es of the old and the new methods, remove V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 91 the damp paper from the machine, after it has passed through a bath of gelatinous size and been cut into sheets. It is then taken to lofts and dried as in hand-making. After hanging about three days, it is taken to a room answering: to the said of the hand-makers, and after exami- nation is calendered, each sheet being passed sepa- rately by hand between iron rollers which subject it to an immense pressure. It is then folded, packed in quires and reams, and goes to market. The early process of finishing paper by pres- sure between sheets of polished paste-board — made in the mill — was superseded by calendering paper, the sheets being placed between copper- plates and passed several times through powerful iron rollers, the product being sometimes called copper-plate paper. This method continued in use until quite recently, but now has given place to what is called super-sheet calendering, in which the paper is passed between rollers, one of which is made of chilled iron, and the other of com- pressed paper, surrounding an iron shaft. The paper is of the strongest kind — commonly manil- la — and is compressed by immense hydraulic power. r 92 PAPER: ITS GENESIS "^ The American Loft-dried Paper of Commerce. Of this there are many quahties, depending upon the raw material used, the management and machinery of individual mills, and other circum- stances ; but, as a class, it has no superior. This could have been said of it for years past in regard to the ordinary purposes of paper ; but for the uses of luxury, and for what are known as wed' ding goods, paper was, until quite recently, imported : now the very choicest article of this class, known as plate paper, is made in America. In this, the stock is most carefully selected, every process of the manufacture sedulously watched, and in the calendering a press much more power- ful even than that commonly used, is employed, while in it the sheets are placed between plates of polished zinc. The press used for this pur- pose, in the mill of Z. Crane, Jr., and Brother, at Dalton, exerts a force equal to 330 tons weight. The result is an exquisitely finished surface, rivaling satin or ivory in beauty. The cost of the machinery required in the immense establishments which fill the place of the little one or two vat mills of seventy or eighty years ago (or in America fifty years ago), may be r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 93 partly estimated by that of some of the leading articles : Thus, a Fourdrinier machine of the very first class in size and workmanship, is worth ^12,000, from which the price decreases to per- haps ^7,000; the rag engines, of which there are necessarily several to each machine, from ^1,000 to $2,000 each ; the calendering machines from $500 to $1,000 ; the plating machines, from $600 to $1,400 each. The Fourdrinier machine made its way slowly at first, except in the British Empire. It was not until the year 181 5, that the invention of Louis Robert returned to its birth-place, with the various improvements made in it by English skill, capital and persistence ; and the first Four- drinier machine was made in France. In 1820 it was first introduced into the United States, one of English manufacture being placed in Gilpin's mill, on the Brandywine. In 1828 there were "a number of these machines in the country, of which six — one to every ten mills — were in Massachusetts." The first Fourdrinier machines manufactured in America, were built about the year 1830, by Messrs. Phelps & Spofford at Windham, Con- r 94 PAPER: ITS GENESIS necticut, at which time, or a little before, a great impetus seems to have been given to the paper business of the country, as is illustrated by a statement of the New York Journal of Commerce, that althouorh the dimensions of its sheet had O been quadrupled in the preceding five years, the improvements in paper machinery had been so great that the cost was reduced 25 per cent. Whether this gain was made through the Fourdrinier or a rival machine, may be doubted. In 1809, John Dickinson, an English manufact- urer, patented a machine to which he afterwards added valuable improvements, which makes a continuous web upon a different principle from that of Fourdrinier, the paper being excellent, especially for printing purposes. In this machine, a hollow polished brass cylinder, perforated with holes or slits, and covered with wire cloth, takes the place of the endless wire web of the Four- drinier. In the cylinder the air is exhausted through the trunnions or axes of the machine. The Dickinson machine was introduced in the American mills before the Fourdrinier, and ap- pears to have been a favorite. Owing to its cheapness, it is still much used for making straw V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 95 and other inferior classes of paper. In 1872, when there were 299 Fourdrinier machines run- ning in the United States, there were 689 cyhnder machines. In 1822, John Ames, son and successor of David Ames, who estabHshed himself as a paper- maker in Springfield, Massachusetts, some years before Zenas Crane located at Dalton, produced a cylinder machine which, it was thought, would have a oreat success. To what extent it was actually introduced, we cannot say. Between 1822 and 1837, Mr. Ames took out four other patents for improvements in paper-making ma- chinery. Later inventions of paper-making machines seem to have been aimed at cheapness of con- struction, or at making thicker paper by means of a double web. Scanlan's machine, with the latter object, combines the Fourdrinier and the cylinder, and the outer and inner surface may be of different texture and colors. James Harper of New Haven has an invention for the same purpose which is claimed to have advantages over every other. The Harris machine is also a double web. V r 96 PAPER: ITS GENESIS The rags and other material from which paper is made, form a very large item of its cost. The gathering of these from the scattered famihes of the country by tin peddlers and others, which has been continued to this day, furnished a sup- ply sufficient for the manufacture in its infancy ; the prizes of bright tin ware teaching the econ- omy of saving them better, perhaps, than money. How much the quaint appeals, in prose and verse, of the manufacturers and newspaper editors, " begging the ladies to save their rags " had to do with the lesson, we can only guess. But with the growth of the manufacture, the home supply soon became inadequate, and great quantities of rags have long been annually imported, as will appear in statistics to be given in the closing portion of this book. They are drawn from all countries in the old world, except those having large paper industries of their own, which are obliged themselves to import. If men have not robbed the cradle to supply this demand, they certainly have the grave, for, as we have said in another connection, the catacombs of Egypt have been ravaged to sell the linen cerements of the mummies to the rae dealers. But with even this V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 97 aid, the supply became limited and rags rose in price. The demand for substitutes began early in the present century, and the search for them has continued ever since. Knight's Dictionary prints, in Nonpareil type, a list of the articles which have been used or suggested, and if it were in a continuous column it would measure forty-six inches. Those who have read the first section of this book need not be told that the use of wood, reeds and the like substance as a material for paper, is not a thing of recent cen- turies in the world, whatever it may be in Europe and America. However, a good many things have to be discovered more than once in this wide world, and new methods of better doing the old work go on forever. And thus in the year 1800, the Marquis of Salisbury presented to our old friend. King George III., who had such a repugnance to paper-making in America^ a book printed upon paper made of straw. We have little doubt that the paper was made and the book written by Matthias Koops, who, in 1801, " succeeded in making the most perfect paper from straw, wood and other vegetables, without the addition of any other known paper stuff." V 98 PAPER: ITS GENESIS He printed a book upon the fabric from these materials, and concerning them, from which Munsell gathered many facts for his Chronology. During a rag famine in Germany, in 1756, an attempt was made to use straw in the paper manufacture, and a book was published giving a plan for reducing all vegetables to pulp. Prob- ably Koops, who, from his name, appears to have been at least of German decent, had seen or heard of it. "He seems also to have been the first to discover a mode of extracting printing and writing ink from waste paper. He obtained a patent for manufacturing paper from straw, hay, thistles, waste and refuse hemp and flax, and different kinds of wood, fit for printing and almost all other purposes for which paper is used. He claimed to have produced the first useful paper that had ever been made from straw alone." But rag famines were at that time rare, and little if any use was made of Koops' dis- covery. In 1824, Louis Lambert, a F'renchman, took out a patent for an improved method of reducing straw to pulp and extracting the coloring and other deleterious matter, so that it could be used V. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 99 V. in the ordinary rag engine. In 1827, Wm. Magaw of Meadville, Pa., patented a mode of preparing hay, straw, and similar substances for making paper. The product was said to be yellowish, but even and strong, and to receive ink as well as common writing paper. Paper was made under this patent at Chambersburg, Pa., in 1828, and it was stated in the newspapers that machinery was being constructed to make 300 reams of it a day. Louis Bomeisler of Philadel- phia, in 1829, obtained a patent for making straw writing paper, white and handsome. For bluing and bleaching paper Smalts were used exclusively until 1840. At that time some paper-makers in Germany and at Annanay, in France, tried to substitute Ultramarine, on ac- count of its being cheaper and offering less dif- ficulties in its application. They were not suc- cessful however, as it did not resist the action of the alum. Artificial Ultramarine was discovered in 1827-28, by Woehler, in Germany, and Guimet, in France, and was first sold at about ;^4 a pound, while natural Ultramarine obtained from Lapis Lazuli, was selling at ;f8o per pound. About 1852 a few manufacturers succeeded in preparing r lOO PAPER : ITS GENESIS alum proof Ultramarine, which came quickly into general use for bluing, and more particularly for bleaching or whitening paper. There is no other substance nor process known that will give the paper a more permanent and softer whiteness, or a more durable blue tint. The process of making alum proof Ultra- marine is as yet only known to a limited number of manufacturers. All attempts to produce it in this country failed, until a few years ago, the firm of Hoffman & Kiessig of New York, commenced to turn out an article which compares most favor- ably with the best known German and French brands, and finds a ready sale. Blue Anilines are used as a substitute for Ultramarine on book and news, — mostly cheap goods, — but scarcely on writing paper. While they have high color- ing qualities, they lack bleaching power, and above all, fastness of color. For a while Aniline took, to some extent, the place of Ultramarine, but time having shown how quickly it fades, it is now used less. It is used to best advantage where the pulp has been first whitened with Ultramarine. The process observed in applying the Ultramarine is as follows: AND ITS REVELATIONS. lOI Before putting it into the engine, it is sepa- rately dissolved, i pound of Ultramarine in one quart of warm water. To avoid spots, an ounce of Soda Ash is added for every pound used of Ultramarine. In all colors where Ultramarine is used for whitening it is put in by itself ; the second color is dissolved separately in boiling water, put in boiling hot, and dashed off with cold water. By this method a very brilliant hue is obtained. A great variety of beautiful and lasting green shades, particularly in writing paper, are obtained with Ultramarine through a combination with chrome yellow. In 1854 a practical chemist exhibited in New York a superior quality of paper made entirely from straw and other grasses, claiming to have discovered a process of freeing them from their silex and other detrimental substances. In 1855 the Saratoga Whig\N2J& printed upon paper made three-fourths of straw, by Buchanan & Kilman of Rock City, who employed a French Bleaching process and made a good writing and printing article. Improvements continued to be made and the manufacture extended, until, in 1870, V. r I02 PAPER: ITS GENESIS "\ when superfine book paper ruled at 20 to 24 cents, and fine book paper at 16 to 17 cents, the newspapers were mostly supplied with straw paper at from 12 to 12I cents. The manufacture of paper from wood reduced to a pulp has not been so rapid, or extended so widely as that from straw, but excellent results have been obtained, and a large quantity of the pulp is now annu- ally used. We give some statistics from Appleton show- ing, to some extent, the growth of the paper manufacture in the United States since the period of which we have already given the facts : In 18 10 the number of mills in the United States was estimated at 185, of which 7 were in New Hampshire, 2)^ in Massachusetts, 4 in Rhode Island, i 7 in Connecticut, 9 in Vermont, 28 in New York, 60 in Pennsylvania, 4 in Dela- ware, 3 in Maryland, 4 in Virginia, i in South Carolina, 6 in Kentucky and 4 in Tennessee. They produced annually 50,000 reams of news- paper, valued at $3.00 per ream ; 70,000 reams of book paper at $3.50; 111,000 reams of writing- paper at $3.00, and 100,000 reams of wrapping paper at 85 cents. r AND ITS REVELATIONS. 103 ■\ In 1828 the newspapers consumed 104,400 reams, costing ^500,000, and the total value of all the paper made was nearly ;^ 7,000,000, and of the rags and other materials used about ^2,000,- 000. In 1839 and 1840, the value of the rags imported each year was $560,000, of paper im- ported, $150,000, and of paper exported, $85,000. In 1850 the value of rags imported was $748,707, three-quarters coming from Austrian and Italian ports, at a cost of $3.16 per hundred pounds. The imports of paper in the same year amounted to $496,593. The capital invested in the manu- facture in the United States was about $18,000,- 000, and the annual product of paper about $17,000,000. In 1870 there were, in the United States, exclusive of paper-hanging manufactories, 669 establishments, mainly making printing, writing and wrapping paper, with a capital of $34,365,014, and products valued at $48,676,985. Of those, 117 in New York produced $10,301,- 563; sixty-five in Massachusetts, $6,661,886; seventy-five in Pennsylvania, $5,176,646; forty- three in Ohio, $3,799,505, and sixty in Connecti- cut, $2,715,630. In Sept., 1882, the number of paper and pulp V. 104 PAPER. mills in the United States was 1040. Since 1870 the expansion of the paper industry has been very great, especially in Massachusetts. In the very latest years many new mills have sprung up in the West. We have thus attempted to trace the story of one of the grandest and most important of the industries of civilization, from the earliest years of the earliest nations to the latest year of the youngest. In this space at our command, we could not be expected to treat so large a subject profoundly, or to exhaust it; but we have endeav- ored to give some correct notice of it, and if we have approximately succeeded, it was worth the endeavor. r ■\ % ^^ 9? Vi . o y-* o ^ ^. c^ •^ ^ . /, ^ ^ V 7^. r THE CAMPBELL TWO-REVOLUTION JOB AND BOOK PRESS. THE ABOVE CUT REPRESENTS THE u IMPROYEDICSMPBELL OB MD1500K"^ H OOi TWO-REYOLUTION, On which this work was printed ; showing, that while our brethren of the paper craft have been improving their manufactures, we have made rapid strides towards perfection in furnishing the machinery that makes their fabric of such inestima- ble benefit to mankind. CAMPBELL PRINTING PRESS & MFC, CO., 145 Monroe St., CHICAGO. | 45 Beekman St., NEW YORK. George Westinghouse, Jr., Ralph Bagaley, President. Secretary and Treasurer, H. H. Westinghouse, Superintendent. THE WESTINGHOUSE ENGINE. Two to 150-horse power. Dispenses entirely with skilled engineers. For a relay to deficient water power ; for steam mills ; for driving paper machinery. Requires neither lining-up, keying-up, adjustment, packing, oiling or wiping. May be set on a floor with- out foundations. Equal to the best in economy of steam. The superior of all in cost of maintenance. Parts built strictly to gauge, and interchangeable without regard to size. Send for illustrated circular and price list. THE WESTINGHOUSE MACHINE CO., 92 and 94 Liberty St., N. Y. Works at Pittsburgh, Pa. ORIGINAL PATENTEES. The American Wood Paper Company, lANUFACTURERS OF Pure Bleached Chemical Fibre. DRY IN ROLLS. SUITABLE FOR BOOK, FINE NEWS, AND WRITING PAPERS. For Samples and Terms apply to E. EMBREE, Agent, - - - NEW YORK. MORSE BUILDING, 140 NASSAU STREET. Address to Posl-Oflfice Box iSog. Charles 0. Brown, Prest. Established iSoi. John D. Carson, Treas. [The above cut is a fac-simile of the wrapper used on the Linen Ledger Paper.] OLD BERKSHIRE MILLS INEN Ledger Paper, Will stand the severest test of Color, Climate, Ink or Wear. Being TRIPLE SIZED (a process entirely our own), and LOFT DRIED, can be erased and written upon the fifth time distinctly. None genuine without the water-mark, thus Old Berkshire Mills, Linen Ledger, AND DATE. We will pay for any book rejected on account of fault in the paper. Send for Samples, test them in comparison, and see that your books are made from paper thus water-marked. CARSON & BROWN CO., Manufacturers, DALTON, MASS., U. S. A. I v,»."3 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ililliillllilllli 018 369 004 8 «S3